Our destination, and home for the week, was Running Waters. It’s a series of permanent waterholes on the ancient Finke River. It’s at the edge of the large Henbury pastoral station, almost on the boundary with Finke Gorge National Park. I had visited Palm Valley last time, but this was something very different.
The rocks of the escarpment were a highlight. Because we were camped beside it for a week, we saw all manner of light play upon it. This was later in the afternoon on our first evening.
And so we come to journey’s end in Alice Springs. Amazing that while the actual trip was only a fortnight long, it took me twice as long to blog about it all!
But all good things must end, so next time I’ll be taking you somewhere much closer to home.
Our last stop before heading into civilisation, was Kings Canyon, where we did the Rim Walk on a cold, foggy morning. There were lots of interesting rock formations though, albeit on a smaller scale, and lots of glorious red sandstone.
Actually, much of it looks to me like a mini version of the Bungle Bungles in Western Australia, except this one is much more accessible.
In the Territory there are a lot of stretches of long, straight road. This one at least goes somewhere (ie. to Uluru).
Not a lot of people know that there’s a third much forgotten monolith after Uluru and Kata Tjuta – Mount Conner. Our tour guide nicknamed it Fooluru since tourists often mistaken it for the other rock – at least from a distance.
Funnily enough, the local Aboriginals tend to give this rock a bit of a miss, too. It’s a place of bad vibes, apparently. It’s also on private land so there’s nary a tourist facility in sight aside from a roadside lookout.
What does the Australian desert look like? Something like this:
Dried up lake, spinifex, mulga, and red, red earth.
I got a closer look at the domes of Kata Tjuta later in the morning on the Valley of the Winds walk. It was a wonderful walk that wound its way in and around the domes, giving a really good perspective of their sheer size. At that time of the morning the walk was also very quiet. I liked having the track almost to myself doing a real bushwalk, unlike the Uluru walks.
There were a few winter flowers out, but like everything in the Territory, they were variations from what we have down south.
In the end this was probably my favourite walk in the Red Centre. It was a place that really exceeded my expectations because it’s simply a very beautiful and awe-inspiring place that still managed to feel wild and remote.
We might not have gotten the red glow of sunrise on Kata Tjuta, but the domes looked mighty fine nevertheless: mysterious, alien-like things rising out of the desert. This photo really shows the true scale of things. The desert oaks in the foreground are only 4 – 5 metres tall while the highest dome in Kata Tjuta is over 500 metres tall.
We were up early the next morning, trying to catch Kata Tjuta (formerly known as the Olgas) at sunrise. But again, the elements conspired against us. Rain during the night meant that the cloud cover was substantial at dawn, but this time it actually made for a spectacular sunrise over Uluru, which was 30km distant.
My first glimpse of Uluru.
It was a strange seeing something so iconic: so familiar and yet not because I have never seen it in context. In pictures, I saw the red rock, but in reality there was also the red sand, desert oaks, spinifex and bloodwood.
Of course, being there in person also means that I saw the true reality of the rock: that it is a high profile tourist destination with a cultural centre, souvenir shops, and climb.
At the end of the day we gathered to watch the sunset. Unfortunately the sun was obscured by clouds, hence the muted colours. Well, you can’t have everything.
Static and Silence 