Phil and Lea Outback Trips

Friday, 21 October 2011

30 Sep - Central Australia - West Macdonnell ranges

Nice week visiting the West MacDonnell ranges, with some great sites (and not so great ones, typically the ones with the tourist busses)

Simpsons Gap - Nice in between busses

Stantley's chasm - Single file of people from the continous stream of busses - didn't even bother with a picture but climbed to the very top and the view was excellent.

Elliry Big Hole - very nice, but we moved on

Orminston Gorge - Excellent place, great walks and swimming hole, and far enough from Alice to avoid the crowds. Great camping site also.

Orminston Gorge

Orminston pound, very similar to Wilpena pound in the Finder's ranges, but smaller

Gorge from the pound end

Glen Helen Gorge - Don't bother

Serpentine Gorge - another nice spot with lookout walk

Redbank Gorge - Beautiful little place with freezing cold water hole. Great camp site but overun by bees, luckly not agressive but uncomfortable.

Thursday, 20 October 2011

28 Sep - Down Tanami track to Alice

Too hot for Lea so we're heading south. We'll have to come back and finish off the Duncan road loop some other time.

Long drive down the Tanami track, stopping at the Wolf Creek crater for an overnight stay and fossicing for bits of backpackers (no luck).

Actually very impressive, glad we popped in

Aside from crater, everything is flat

From rim looking down at the camp

Tanami Track - 1100km of corrugation and dust

26 Sep - Halls Creek area

It's starting to get VERY hot up here. Halls creek is a fantastic place with lots of places to see, great camping and excellent 4WD'ing... track everywhere. We'll come back when it's cooler and only gave it a couple of days, but it's worthy of much more than that.

Caroline Pool - go overnight stay and swim

Palm spring - another good swim

Sawpit gorge, swim?

One of the many springs in the area

Sawpit gorge

21 Sep - Bungle Bungle NP

5 excellent days checking out the tourist site and taking a 3-day hike into Picanniny gorge.

Classic dome shapes

Cathedral gorge

Echidna chasm with overhead sunlight

provides the most amazing colours

Mini Palm Gorge, a low frequency echo chamber, you can hear frogs croaking loudly from all the way back into the gorge

Piccaninny Gorge

Only accessable via a long 15km hike into a gorge with 5 "fingers", each finger being a gorge of its own. It's very hot and there is little water in the gorge. All up, walked 40kms in 3 days carrying around 5-7 litres of water each, and treated another 6L... but well worth the effort.

(Big camera was too heavy, had to settle for the compact one :-( )

BYO Camel

Carved up dry riverbed

Into the central gorge

Nice place to camp - based of 1st finger

Base camp #1

2nd Finger - most striking gorge with passages so tight they turn into long caves

and keep going for 2km

squeeze in

14 Sep - Canoe trip down Ord River

This is a 3-day trip from the base of the Argyle river dam to Lake Kununurra. As our canoe blew up, we hired one and used the hire company river camps.

Starting off at the base of the dam

Down the small rapids we go

Drying the equipment after rolling in the rapids - oops

View of the river from 1st camp climb

1st Camp

Unusual canyon

Room with a view

The view

The entertainment

8 Sep - Kununurra

Spent a few days (6) at Kununurra to explore the surrounding area. Unfortunately, we're very late in the season.... it's getting very hot, there are bushfires everywhere obscuring the landscape and all the waterfalls are dry.

Kununurra is still a wonderful region and we checked out the areas below:

Hidden Valley National park is a mini-bungles range on the edge of town