Tjoritja (West MacDonnell Ranges)

We’ve been out of range and off the grid for the last five days. Oh the serenity!

The drive in to the ranges is a winding road aptly named Namatjira Drive as the road leads to Hermannsburg where Albert was born and his father’s country was in Glen Helen.

Unlike other places we’ve travelled through so far, the landscape here is absolutely stunning; undulating hills and red coloured jagged cliff faces which turn purple as dusk approaches soaring into infinity. With every turn or rise over a crest in the road another jaw dropping panoramic view appears and Albert’s watercolour paintings are brilliantly depicted in front of our eyes. Lots of wow moments.

Clearly this area gets a lot of rainfall when it does rain. The wide dry river beds and tall and robust Ghost gums are a testament to the grand flow of water in the wet season.

We visited four gorges, Glen Helen, Ormiston, Ellery and Serpentine Creek and each had its own waterhole. These waterholes are quite large, very deep and the water is ICY! Visit the gallery section of my site for some stunning pics I took of the gorges. Here’s a teazer.

Gutsy Steve went in for not one, but three swims at Ormiston Gorge. That was his bath for the day! I chickened out. I waded up to my knees, ten seconds later when I couldn’t feel by legs anymore I got out.

There’s a lot of birdlife here and they appear to be quite friendly. Whilst we did not see a dingo, we knew they were around as we heard a few howling in the middle of the night. This morning we noticed large footprints on our table outside. We had lentil burgers for dinner so clearly a vego!

At night, the almost full moon lit up the bushland surrounding our bush camp. As it was our last night at Ormiston Gorge, we decided to walk down to the waterhole, torches in hand, aural senses on high alert for any disconcerting sound. As we meandered down the track it was spookily quiet and still and with every slight sound (real or imagined), we pointed our torch in that direction expecting who knows what to jump out at us. Ha! Nothing did.