West Macdonnell Ranges

30/08/2018

Over the last four days we have visited Standley Chasm, Ellery Creek Big Hole, Serpentine Gorge, Ochre Pits, Ormiston Gorge, Glen Helen Gorge, Mt Sonder Lookout, Redbank Gorge, Tylers Pass Lookout, Gosse Bluff, Hermannsburg and Palm Valley. Suffice to say we are a little gorged out for the moment. Each location has its own unique characteristics that make each worthwhile the effort.

Standley Chasm is privately owned and therefore the owners feel that in addition to their café and camping fees they need to charge a separate fee of $12 p/p to be able to do the 1.2km walk to view the chasm which is spectacular as the midday sun shines light on the sides of the rock faces providing brilliant colour. The only issue in our opinion is that some of the shine is blemished by the fact that it cost us $24 to see it. Time again, we would skip it only due to the cost, if all of these natural wonders were to be pay per view, we couldn’t afford to view them.

Ellery Creek Big Hole is the largest permanent water hole in this area, apparently it is also the warmest for swimming as it sees more sun than any of the others. It is a very pretty place with clear water and amazing backdrop of the rock walls, we didn’t swim, but we did sit and ponder its beauty for quite a while. Whilst here we also did the 3km Dolomite walk which weaved through the creek bed an up over a small range, there where lots of shrubs that were starting to flower, still no wildlife though.

 

Serpentine Gorge has a pretty ordinary 1.3km walking track (it’s a 4wd service track) to a small narrow gorge, that has a small amount of water fed from a natural spring. There is a side track just before the gorge that leads to an awesome lookout that has a sheer drop down into the gorge. Well worth the effort to get up to the lookout.

Ochre Pits reminded us a lot of the coloured sands up near rainbow beach, except it seems to have heaps more colours, we luckily visited in the afternoon when the sun was shining on most of the coloured sands. Unlike the coloured sands though this area holds cultural significance and is not allowed to be touched, let alone scrapped into a glass coke bottle for a memento.

Ormiston Gorge –

Glen Helen Gorge is home to a beautiful gorge that has the Finke river passing through it. There was even a lady swimming, we found out though that she was from Tassie. This place is also marketed as a resort, fortunately we had received a heads up from other travellers that the term resort is used a little loosely, we did not stay here and are glad we didn’t.

Mt Sonder Lookout is where we met two other couples that stopped in for sunset, fortunately we all had fridges or eskies in our cars, great spot to get to know new friends and have a couple of drinks.

Redbank Gorge is a 2km walk through the sandy and rocky creek bed to a water hole that lies between the gorge, another beautiful spot that is different and unique to the others.

Tylers Pass Lookout provides a view over Gosse Bluff.

 

Gosse Bluff is a crater that apparently resulted from a 600 metre wide comet that crashed here 142 million years ago. We drove in, put a tick on our sheet, and drove out again. There were walks that we could have done but we wanted to get to Palm Valley today.

 

Hermannsburg is a small town that has a small shop a servo and a historical precinct. On the day we visited there was a 50km/h wind that blew up a significant dust storm, we had parked MIA here whilst we explored Palm Valley in Frank, and when we returned the wind had blown heaps of this red dust inside MIA, we literally had piles of red dust everywhere. I am not sure if this is an aboriginal only community or not and due to the dust storm, we didn’t get to explore very much. There are signs around town indicating no photography, so we didn’t take any photos.

 

Palm Valley is 20kms along a 4wd track tracing the Finke river, the last 3 kms or so was real 4wd, Franky had an absolute ball, heaps of low gear rock climbing. We also found this bloke along the track and you wouldn’t believe what he bought…… that’s right he bought a Jeep. It was OK though cause Franky happily and easily snatched him out of the sand. So now Franky has recued a Hilux in the Cape and a Jeep in the Finke river.

 

As we started our walk through this gorge we were amazed at how different and unique this gorge is compared to everything else, and this was mainly due to the abundance of tall Red Cabbage Palm trees and Cycads.

31/08/2018

We are now back in Alice and spent yesterday afternoon and a great part of the night cleaning after the dust storm at Hermannsburg.