Alice Springs and MacDonnell Ranges

Today I had an early flight from Darwin to Alice Springs. The flight was only supposed to be 2 hours which was nice especially since they served us breakfast. When was the last time that you were on a 2-hour flight and they served a meal??? If you were it probably wasn’t in the US. Some of the other airlines need to take some cues from Qantas in what they offer a paying customer.

I landed less than 2 hours after we took off, so shortly around 9am. I picked up my car, stopped at the grocery store to grab some much needed water, snacks and food for week long journey in the Australian Outback.

I thought I had an idea of what to expect in this journey across the lower part of the Northern Territory, a lot of flat lands with red dirt roads and maybe some trees here and there. I did a lot of research on the best drives to do and things to see around here and the Red Centre Drive seemed to be the way to go. The scenery on this road that I am travelling is beautiful in a way I have never seen. Tall deep red mounds that are covered with patches of white stone and a ton of green shrubbery. Oddly enough when you are close to some of the rocks in order to touch them, they are really smooth (and hot!) I knew they would be hot, but smooth and soft wasn’t what I was expecting at all. I had a few places on my list that I wanted to visit before stopping for the night, even though I had no idea where I was sleeping.

My 1st stop was Simpsons gap, which was a fairly large gap (as the name obviously portrays) between 2 large rocks that had water between them. The water you can’t swim in, not that it looked like you would want to, and the walk was short. It was pretty but nothing too incredibly special. My 2nd stop was Standley Chasm. There is a $10AUD fee to access the Chasm which I understand to an extent because it is on Aboriginal land….BUT I don’t carry cash on me (because it is easier to steal than a credit card) and they had a $15AUD minimum for cards….so of course I had to buy something so I bought a Koozie and headed to the chasm. Now, this was prettier than the last place BUT not really worth $10AUD. The walls that went up were really tall, and so bright red, if I had made it here by noon which a site had suggested I am sure that the colors would have been really stunning, but they were bright and pretty non the less.

My next stop was Serpentine Gorge, where they had a hike to a lookout where you could over see the valley area you were driving through and the gorge as well. This hike was a bit brutal, I won’t lie. I mentioned a few posts ago that I had bought a bug net for my head, and so glad that I did. I put this little bad boy on and up I went. Now it warned me that it was going to be a steep climb and that there was unstable footing due to rocks but that didn’t worry me too much. Up and up I went, huffing and puffing away. I don’t smoke so I shouldn’t sound like I do when I hike but holy hell lol. My face turns all red and I look like I may pass out, but no worries I don’t. Just getting some good ole cardiovascular exercise in. At the top, you could look upon everything you just hiked up above and head over to the gorge side. The gorge side is impressive, but more trees than I was expecting. On the other side I took a seat in what shade I could find and took some cool pictures of these 2 little birds who had blue wings, they were sitting in a tree cuddling with one another and every now and then would take flight to cruise on the wind that was blowing. I actually encountered 2 other people coming up the track as I was about to head back down. They were huffing and puffing as well, and they had flip flops on. I think people who do hikes in flip flops have a few screws loose, the terrain was very loose rock with all size rocks everywhere, I had a hard time in sneakers. By the time I got down to the bottom, I had a nice blister on my right little ole pinkie toe, so I slipped on one flip flop to give it a rest while I drove to where ever I was going next.

I made my way to a place called Ochre Pits, I was going to skip by them cause I had no idea what in the heck they were and since I have no internet I couldn’t google them. (Hahahaha oh the life we live these days) I figured what the hey, they are not far off the road, lets go check it out. Boy am I glad that I did! This is a place that is still used today by an Aboriginal tribe/clan for specific purposes, so much so that if you try to take a piece of the Ochre with you, the least you can be fined is $5,000 AUD. No I didn’t take anything with me! The colors run vertically now, but they used to run horizontally and the area where I was is over 300 million years old. It is so amazing to know you are standing somewhere that was around that long ago. I know the landscape has changed a bit but not by much. The rocks were a mix of yellow which is created by white clay and iron oxide (rust), a stunningly beautiful shade of purple (which the nearby sign said was red-brown) which is formed by high levels of oxidized iron in very find grain haematite or limonite (which I assume is a kind of stone?, but no internet yet so no google lol) and the 3rd color was of course white which has little to no iron in it. The white color is actually from katolin, which is a white clay mineral. There is also pieces of mica and quartz in the ochre which give it a shiny quality.

So what exactly is all of this used for you might ask? Well I actually took pictures of the informational signs so that I could remember! Men are the ones who are responsible for digging the ochre and making sure that the woman have enough for the ceremonies. The colors always have meanings as well. The white and yellow are used mainly for decoration or cosmetics. If you mix them with water or animal fat (ewwww) it becomes a paste which you can apply using a finger or feather. They also used Ash and charcoal as well. The red is the most symbolic and often feared color. It is used for major ceremonies, like in a young boy’s initiation. The other way that ochre is used is for medicinal purposes to heal various ailments. You mix it with animal fat (again….ewwww) and apply it directly to the affected area. For head and chest colds, roll it with eucalyptus leaves and apply to the skin. If you have aching muscles, use the red coloring with animal fat(last one….ewww) and run it into the sore muscles. No idea if any of this really works, because 1: I didn’t take any with me and 2: I am not touching animal fat! HA! Ok enough of animal fat and ochre pits!

My final stop for the day was Ormiston Gorge, which is still located in the Macdonnell ranges. This location had camping, with free gas BBQ areas, man-made sheltered areas, toilet and showers (which didn’t work, dammit). There was a watering hole here where you could swim, but this whole brown rusted looking water is just not appealing to me no matter how hot I am. There was an Aboriginal family here swimming, fishing and having a little picnic. I decided to stay the night here, hoping that someone else might show up so that I didn’t have to stay the night in the camping area totally alone. While I was making my dinner of a salami sandwich (hahah) another car rolled in, and a father and son decided to spend the night. Not the most social people but oh well, it was 2 more warm bodies to keep my mind at ease. I wanted to do the gorge hike in the AM, so this seemed like the best place to just crash. I set up the back seat for myself to sleep in. I put a sheet down, had my fan going, windows down with screens on them to keep bugs out and my pillow. I busted out my book and read till I was just about to fall asleep.

XO