26. June - 2. July

Back in Alice we got our car serviced and received again one of the last unpowered camp sites. We didn’t do much else except climbing the Meyer’s Hill in the Botanical Garden and deciding that the West MacDonnell Ranges will be the next loop.

So we left Alice Springs on the Larapinta Drive (we’re not keen enough to do the Larapinta Walk covering around 220km). The first stop was at  Simpsons Gap which is the most prominent gap in the West MacDonnell Ranges. We drove directly in front of the Gap and walked the last few meters. There were really good views at the gap and there was still ice-cold water in the creek. If you are lucky you can spot black-footed rock-wallabies but we didn’t see any. We only saw dead fish but this is a natural phenomenon. When the water gets colder and colder the fishes get stressed and a bacterium covers their gills until they die and provide food for other animals…

We walked the 1.5km Cassia Hill loop which showed some local plants – luckily we took an information sheet - and elevated views of the range  and the Simpson Gap. You can reach the Simpson Gap via a Bike Path (17km) from Alice Springs and you can stop several times – there are bike racks provided. But some people must love their bikes and even carry them around the walk which went up the hill.

Standley Chasm was the next stop although you  have to pay an entry fee, but it was nice. The Chasm is also a gap between the mountain ridge but no water flowed in between . We climbed over several rocks, just between the big rocks climbing up on the right and left. You just had 5-10m in between. But it was a dead-end suddenly there were rocks lying in front of you and you couldn’t climb them (too dangerous and probably dead-end). 

At this place we saw several funny looking trees. One tree was lying on the ground but it still had branches growing up. Actually I’m not sure if the tree was still growing or if a fig tree was growing on top of it. Anyway it looked great.

Then we reached Ellery Creek Big Hole and were lucky to get a camp site! The waterhole within the gorge was big but the water was definitely to cold for a swim and I don’t really want to join dead fishes… So we just took our pictures and went back to the camp to prepare dinner – it’s a nice thing to have free gas BBQ’s. There are only two walks – the wheelchair friendly to the Ellery Creek and the 3km long Dolomite Walk. During the Dolomite Walk we saw some flowers, several rocks which show the geological process of the site and of course lots of stones on the path.

 

After packing the tent we drove further west stopping at Serpentine Gorge. This area is just for day-visitors and gets its name from the way the water is flowing through – it moves around like a snake… The car park is probably 3km away form the gorge – to protect the environment. We walked up the hill to the lookout – it was strenuous to walk up the hill although there were steps all the way. But we had a wonderful view into the gorge. There was still some water but it was not connected anymore it was more like several little lakes.

 

At Ormiston Gorge where camping with showers is available we just stayed for the walks and decided against the ranger talk as it was really crowed and we arrived a bit early. We walked past the Ghost Gum Lookout and further on through the gorge and water back to the camping area. There is also the possibility to do a 3-4h walk of the Ormiston Pound but they said you had to swim across the creek (lot of rain during the last days…).  Our walk led us halfway up the mountain so   we had good views into the gorge and beyond.

Finally we had to crawl over big stones to the riverbed (maybe we took a shortcut) and then over the  stones in the creek-bed. The first section was dry but we could see in the back pounded water and people floating on mattresses around and a little bit of water in front of us. We checked first the rocks if there was a dry way back to the car park but decided against the climbs and took our shoes off. It’s much easier to walk barefoot through water… And the water was cold, luckily just knee deep.

The next day we drove to Redbank Gorge – the last gorge able to be  visited. You have to walk through the creek to reach the gorge. The waterhole is near permanent and you could swim through the gorge – flotation device recommended and only on warm days as the water won’t get warm. The fishes in that area were still alive – so maybe the water is not as cold as in the other gorges or the fishes are from another species.

Have you ever had the feeling to miss some opportunities? We just experienced two by not having the camera at hand. On the way to the gorge a dingo crossed the road in front of us and then had a wee or poo. He was in no way concerned that cars may drive past. The other missed opportunity was during the walk – an eagle was getting his lunch. He dived into the water to catch some fishes – not sure if he actually caught one but he didn't return to try again.

We returned to the campsite “2 Mile 4WD camping” – free camping close or even in the Finke river. We erected the tent and collected the firewood and created our own fire-ring – it looked like a big stove with three single plates. We had a quiet time and did a lot of star-gazing. Venus, Mars and Saturn were visible all evening and it was quite comfortable to lay on the blanket and watch the sky. We even saw the ISS, some other satellites, several shooting stars and of course the Southern Cross.

Unfortunately it started to rain during the night so we decided to stay a little bit longer and not to return for Territory Day. This camp area is close to Glen Helen – the only commercially operated “resort” in the West MacDonnell Ranges. They offered a fireworks display as well. And we watched it from the shelter of our tent. It was interesting how the sound echoed from the surrounding ranges.

Best regards,
Tom and Anja

21. – 25. June

Now we are in Alice Springs and have to decide what we’re going to do. You wouldn’t believe how much there is to do: Botanical Garden, Royal Flying Doctor Service, Anzac Hill, Desert Park, West MacDonnell Ranges, East MacDonnell Ranges, Chambers Pillar and of course Uluru and Kings Canyon – it looks like we’re going to spent some while around here and doing several loop-trips.

We booked into the Caravan Park (luckily we received one of the last available unpowered tent sites – high season has just started) and went into the city to get the latest information from the visitor centre. We decided to go to the Botanical Garden and spent the afternoon there reading the new booklets. It was a nice sunny day and we combined it with a little walk through the garden. We saw several birds and one actually built its nest and it was not disturbed by the people around. We could come really close (less than 1m) and take our pictures. Some other birds were not so good models… a little green parrot was quite nervous and didn’t stay long in one spot – but we caught him on a picture.

Then we decided to drive up the Anzac Hill for sunset. But as we came closer to the hill we could already see a lot of other people, having the same idea. The car-park looked really full and we walked up the hill – little exercise won’t hurt ;-) After the climb we enjoyed the 360 degree view around Alice Springs. Unfortunately there were no clouds to form a fantastic sunset but it was good anyway – including the hundreds of other tourists (even buses come up there every 10 min. or so).

Our first loop trip started in a south-east direction. We stopped at the Rainbow Valley Conservation Reserve. It has a really nice camp area with free gas-BBQ’s, picnic tables and a pit toilet. After setting the tent up we  went to collect our firewood – a cold night might be in front of us – and it didn’t take long to collect enough. Then we walked to the rock formation called Mushroom Rock. Yes, from the right angle this rock actually looked like a mushroom but not a poisonous one as a lot of birds were nesting on the upper walls.

We had a look at the main rock formation as well which is a sandstone cliff. This cliff, although free standing, is part of the James Range and they say most stunning in the right light conditions. First we looked at them during normal daylight so we let our imagine loose and decided one rock looks more like an angry bull [don’t wear anything red in front of it] or like a tame lion – depending if you look from the right or left side at it.

 

 

 

 

 

The second look was of course at late afternoon close to sunset. Yes we watched the sunset and looked into easterly direction. And we agree the rock looks much better at sunset at the coloured rock bands nearly sparkle. As with all rocks the weather had a lot to do with its creation…  This rock was created when it was much wetter and iron got dissolved in the stone. Now there are different reds visible (from dark brown over red to orange and finally white). The darker sections contains a lot of iron, the orange sections has less and of course the white sections are ironless. In the end the iron concentration dictated how much the rock eroded or weathered…

Next day we left to our next destination. We had to follow the Hugh River  Road and cross the Central Australian Railway. We stopped and even tried to locate a coming train… No worries, it was safe to have your ear on the track – no train was near so we kept going. Just before reaching the Chambers Pillar Historical Reserve we put our sand-flag up as there were some dunes to cross, but they were really easy and Tom was still used to them ;-)

This time we didn’t had to rely on our GPS as the road was well formed and the pillar was towering in the distance. The main feature is a 50m high sandstone pillar which stands tall and on its own.

Chambers Pillar has high importance for the European settlers as well as for the Aboriginals. For the early settlers (at around 1860) it was a landmark on their long travels from Adelaide – understandable how tall it is. Maybe it was even taller as it might have eroded a little bit in nearly 150 years. You find a lot of evidence as the settlers left a record in the sandstone – it was signed – as did John Ross and Alfred Giles in 1870 and a Mrs but the “S” is written the other way around. Now it’s illegal to sign the rock as this adds to the erosion of the rock.

The Aboriginal Significance is to be found in their dreamtime story about the Gecko ancestor Itirkawara. This gecko ancestor was a powerful and quite violent men who ignored some of his tribes rules by marrying a girl with the wrong skin color. They were banished and turned into the rock formations – he became the pillar and the girl formed the rock called castle rock close by.

It’s possible to find a rare gecko species – probably one of the descendent of the Gecko ancestor. This gecko is called knob-tailed gecko and is quite small. Most visitors won’t see it as it’s mostly active during the night and really good camouflaged – light brown to beige in colour – hardly to be recognised in the sand. But we had luck and found one (something was crawling on the sand ah by the way the sand was beige in colour and not red); before it went to the next hiding spot under a bush, stone or even buried in the sand.

We walked the probably 1.5km loop walk around the pillar which provided some good views and a little rock with not so old signatures. The viewing platform at the base was climbed after 50 steps and then  we had a look at the old signatures – they are in good condition and visible. Unfortunately you find newer ones as well even though it’s quite dangerous to get to the base.

As you might already expected the pillar shows it best colours at sunrise or sunset when it glows like a burning ember. It looked good although a little bit dust or some clouds might have increased the view. While we were watching the pillar we had several discussion what the pillar looks like – but this time I leave it to your imagine please give us some feedback.

You can walk around Castle Rock as well which we did in the morning. We came across another rock which gave us some ideas to play around with the camera and ourselves… During the walk we saw several nice flowers which looked to be really soft but actually they were quite hard to touch. I think they are called “cat tail”. The rock looked a little bit different and we noticed more and more features the longer we looked at it.

 

Finally it was time to head back to Alice Springs but with a stop in  between. The stop was at the Ewaninga Rock Carvings. At this place you walk around several rock carvings.

Goodbye,
Tom and Anja

17. – 20. June

 

Now we left Birdsville for the third time but finally in the northerly direction and it was again amazing how green everything is. We stopped at an area with an abundance of birds in every colour and size. You could just sit and watch them; trying to count how many different kind you discover...

 

We stopped in Bedourie for a little while and stayed overnight in Boulia before going onto the Donohue and Plenty Highway to Alice Springs. At night we noticed the rush-hour of cattle as we camped close by a creek. This big herd of cattle must  have attracted a huge number of dingoes as we heard so many during the night. But we arrived unharmed in Alice Springs.

Cheers,
Tom and Anja

11 – 16 June

Simpson Dessert – Can we cross?

We arrived in Mt. Dare and bought a sand flag. It was quite hard to find one; we kept looking from Broken Hills onwards but were sure to get one in Mt. Dare as this is the last stop before the desert. It’s compulsory to have a sand flag if you’re going into the desert. We spoke to the guys at the station and they told us that the exit to Birdsville was just re-opened that day so we had a short discussion if we want to cross or not. We hired the satellite phone, bought a track booklet of the Simpson and were on our way to Dalhousie Springs. We should mention here that the dirt/gravel road to Mt. Dare was pretty bad. Corrugations and rocky. We though it could not get worse than this. Seeing the road leading from Mt. Dare to Dalhousie Springs proved us quickly wrong. – If there is some ‘higher being’ up in the local government with influence or at least a grader licence, please fix this road! – Average speed was far below 20km/h. This was the only save speed on the road without throwing stones from the tyres all around your car. Beside that, it was bumpy and rocky as hell. The good thing is, that you will be very surprised about that place and it’s worth all that hassle.   

Dalhousie Springs offers good camping and a lake with warm water fed by a spring (ergo part of the name). We changed quickly into our swimming gear and stepped into the water. I guess everyone makes the same sound when entering the water; in winter a relaxing “aaah” and in summer probably “oooh, that’s hot”. Pool noodles and tubes were lying around, free to use by the exhausted traveller. So you can really be in the water and just float around. Sometimes you could feel a nibbling at your toes or tummy… little fishes were checking-out every new arrival in the warm water. The fishes (not bigger than 3cm) are quite curious and like to explore the feet of the swimmer but they are harmless and some call them the “exfoliating fishes”. We had our swim in the evening and in the morning to warm up again. The temperature drop down close to zero last night and the hot lake was really a ‘live saver’!

Our next stop was the Purni Bore just before the real Simpson Desert start. Purni Bore is an artificial waterhole created by the companies searching for oil and gas in the desert. The birds and wildlife loves this area as it’s now a permanent water source.

Finally, time to face our Nemesis: The Simpson Desert! – Which means quite a lot of sand… loose sand… soft sand… wet sand… dry sand… mean sand… friendly sand… not so friendly sand… holding sand… hiding sand… pushing sand… sand in your shoes… sand in your clothing… and like with the forest, sometimes you can not see the dunes because of the sand. Ups, I should not forget to mention that it is quite easy to see ‘red’ in the Simpson Desert, because it is full of what? … Right, red sand!

Back to more serious things: driving on sand. – So far we had only a short lived sand driving experience near Fraser Island. We had a sand test run there and got so easily bogged with our car that we decided to get the 2 inches suspension lift and heavier coils. Even with the modifications on our car people were telling us that you should use a big 4 wheel drive with high ground clearance and a  V6 or even better a V8 engine to conquer the desert. Beside the difficult sand dunes you had to carry fuel, water and food for 4-5 days of travel. All that makes your car heavy at the beginning of the trip and climbing up the dunes will be extra hard. – We packed up our car with the usual camping gear, food, water (40 litres) and three additional 10 diesel canisters (a total of 90 litres). 90 litres should be enough to get us to the next fuel stop at Birdsville, around 500km away.

Nevertheless, we drove on starting our desert adventure. The track started to become more sandy and it was time to let the air out of the tyres. 22psi for the front tyres and 26psi for the back ones.

The first part was on the French Line which had sand dunes up to 15m high, probably every odd meters and sometimes you a had clay pan in between which offer good camping. Our first night was spent close to marker FRN 129. During the night we could hear several dingoes but didn’t see any new tracks in the morning. Driving up the dunes was not as difficult as expected. Buying the wider tyres paid back know. The car was ‘surfing’ on the sand, not digging into it. Getting over the hump of the dunes was a steep learning curve. Some dunes were very easy to climb, straight track uphill (low incline) and from time to time a small sand hump to get over. – Low gear engaged, second gear selected and the Grand Vitara Diesel drove over them like nothing.

Other sand dunes made live much more ‘interesting’. The track went up on an angle and at the hump at the top you had to make a sharp turn to the left or right. – I think they call it dogleg, because when you look at the track from the sky it looks like a dogleg. – Means you could not just drive over it, you had to find the right speed, which gets you over the hump. But not to quick! You still need to get that turn at the top… And never forget that you are driving on sand… you turn the steering wheel and just for a second or two nothing happens. – Like driving on snow! – You have to be patient and know where the car wants to go before do anything.  Practice makes perfect! You learn how to tackle the dunes quickly, if not than you have to move quite a lot of sand. :-)

Then we turned onto the Colson Track which connects the French line with the WAA line. As this track is going with the dunes we thought it might be a bit easier and no dunes to climb. There were no dunes but the track was sometimes washed out and eroded so you had to keep to the narrow track and even use the swales. Then we reached the WAA line and kept east over several dunes. The dunes are around 20 to 30m high and several have a dogleg just before, on top of or after it. A dogleg is a sharp left-right turn not really visible before you reach it. This was a reason why we had to get our shovel out to dig the car free. But luckily we didn’t have to dig deep as we stopped directly after noticing there is no going forth or back.  The car was free and we went down the dune and started attempt no. 2 and made it with no problem at all. Most dunes Tom approached without me in the car – I climbed the dune before – to check for oncoming traffic and to give him an idea how the tracks goes on... The following part of the track gave us smaller dunes but the track was harder to spot. You could notice that the WAA line is not  as much used as the French line. Several times we had bushes growing between the tyre tracks and directly at the track side so you couldn’t avoid touching them. – A GPS unit and good maps are a must out here. Try do a follow an overgrown track and you quickly realize how easy it is to get lost! We had to navigate by GPS coordinates to make sure to stay on the track. Out here it is very important to know exactly where you are and where you are going. The main task for the co-driver was to keep record of our current position and heading. This becomes very important when you are in trouble and need to call for some help on the sat phone.

Driving down sand dunes is not as simple as you might think. The whole mass of the car is pushing down the hill. You have to use the engine to break and control your car. You are quite tempted to hit the break but as soon as you do it the wheel will block and you can not steer the car anymore. You have to break and release it in an interval if you want do brake the car. In general the backend of the car tries to slowly overtake the frontend. As a result of it the car wants to go down the hill in an angle. As a driver your goal is to keep the car going down a dune in a straight line to avoid ending up upside down in your car. Even when you go down in a straight line the back pushed quite a lot and you as a driver has to compensate this motion by slightly hitting the accelerator. This will get the front tyres out of the deep sand and over the little sand hill building up in front of the front wheels. – Now, you can understand that  driving in the desert is a bit more tricky then on bitumen.

We even had to cross several salt pans which were ok as long as they were dry – but if you saw any water better to go around them... This happened just 3km before Tilly Junction and we used the de-tour. And what kind of track was that! Sometimes it was 5m on the salt pan then  5m next to the pan. In total the de-tour was around 20km long but we needed nearly 2h. Finally we arrived at Tilly Junction and turned north on the Knolls track. You had to cross some smaller dunes on this track but most times you had to create your own track and navigate through the bushes. The final part was the Approdinna Attora Knolls an area in which camping is prohibited (the only part in the desert). This part is covered with Gypsum flat topped outcrops. This rock is so soft that it erodes so quickly you can only walk a little bit from one car park.

Our camp was set close to marker FRN 239 and we were greeted by some airplanes. Four airplanes were on their way to Birdsville when they saw us. I think to show us their respect they flew so deep and were “flapping” their wings to say hello. We could nearly see their face and the smile. The next part was best described as crossing salt pan – we had to cross up to 600m wide salt pans and of course to climb some dunes. Unfortunately Lake Poeppel had some water in so we couldn’t  cross it – we didn’t want to risk to get bogged – so we couldn’t see the plaque marking the corner of Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory. But anyway we travelled through all three states within one hour. The track along the QAA line was a little bit easier as the dunes were spread apart and didn’t have so many doglegs...

During the next day we travelled through some washing bays as we called it – bushes between the track for the under body wash and so many bushes reaching into the track the sides of your car got washed. But the wash was not good as it created more scratches than any other thing. Then we were standing in front of a dead end. The Eyre Creek was impassable. The track dropped 3m and then there was only water. We met another party going to Birdsville and one bloke tried to walk through the water. He didn’t walk far – after 2m he had to swim so he returned quickly to put his clothes back on. This meant using the bypass which will add some 60km to the total track. The other guys are working at a Suzuki dealership so they were amazed to see a Grand Vitara in the desert and they decided to travel with us. I guess they were curious to see how the car is coping. The bypass was a bumpy ride but not many dunes to cross. Luckily we had the GPS to determine the right way. When we finally reached the Eyre Creek crossing we were stunned. The creek was around 75m wide and quite fast flowing over the rocky ground. But we crossed it without any problem. The water must have been around 60cm deep as the water was coming over the bonnet – once again we thanked our decision to have a snorkel. So we returned to the QAA line and crossed the last dunes before stopping before the big one. We had a look at the dune before we started to tackle it. We needed two attempts as there was a curve in the middle of the dunes which cost our momentum. But on the other side of the dune we were standing in front of a dead end again – the Lake Nappanerica was still flooded. We have seen this place on our earlier visit to Birdsville. This meant we had to do a final de-tour around a lake which was once again a really bumpy ride.

Finally it is time to tell you a bit more about how green the desert looked liked. When we started our desert trip, we expected to see a bit more sand. A lot of dried out bushes and plants, with other words ‘dead stuff’ lying around in a lot of sand. Surprisingly driving into the Simpson desert was like driving into a green valley of lush plant life. A lot of flower were in bloom and all the scrub was really fresh and green. Even on the track itself you could find plenty of plant life. There were plenty of animal tracks in the sand. Dingos, camels, snakes, lizards, bugs… all are part of the desert. We only heart a few Dingos howling during the night and saw a few camels next to the track. Lucky all the more dangerous wildlife stayed far out of our way. Nature is great as long as you can play it safe. Seeing a snake from inside your car in front of the car on the road is fine. But that is as close as we want to be on purpose. Just a reminder, part of the desert wildlife is the Taipan, King Brown Snake, scorpions… Sleeping in a tent is great with these neighbours! - At least these guys belong to the quiet category. :-)

At last we were on the final stretch to Birdsville – the nice gravel road at sunset. We arrived at the caravan park which was crowded, had our shower and went to the pub to celebrate the crossing with a cold beer. We arrived on time to watch the complete State of Origin 2 game... It was a nice atmosphere to celebrate. It was although remarkable how Birdsville has changed when a lot of tourists are in town. The word (Simpson Desert is possible to cross) must have spread around and the  people arrived. We noticed this already in the Desert – every day we saw more and more people going west. The funniest part is when motorbikes are coming your way – you just see something black hoping up and down in the dunes. During our travel we saw several animal tracks (camel, donkey, dingoes, beetles, mice...) but luckily the only wildlife we saw was birds and birds and birds. And of course we listened and sang along to the song “I’ve been thru the desert on a horse with no name...”

Have fun,
Tom and Anja

 

PS: Thanks to the 4^3 guys from Wagga Wagga! They took these amazing photos of us, the creek crossing and Big Red. - What about another swim in the creek? Thanks again Craig, Richard, Glen and John. – Before I forget it 4^3 means: 4x4 is the car and x4 are the four guys in the car. Together it’s 4x4x4 = 4^3!

Meeting the 4^3 guys!

Creek Crossing… or playing U-Boot?

Blowing the ballast tanks to get out of the water…

Congratulations from Greg after a successful crossing…

Big Red, up and over he goes…