Living Life: EAST MACDONNELL RANGES

We decided to take the annexe down this morning before heading off on our day’s adventure. We had seen a forecast for rain in AS tomorrow and as we expected to be out all day today we thought it would be best to take it down before-hand. We didn’t want to pack the annexe away if it was wet or damp. Our timing was good – it started to rain about 10 minutes after we had packed it away!

The original forecast for today was mainly fine with a bit of cloud. As it turned out the ‘mainly fine’ parts were few and far between. A large part of the day was cold and wet!

We decided to do some more exploring of the East Macdonnell Ranges and our first stop was Emily Gap. This is a truly beautiful place and we could have stayed a lot longer – if the weather had been kinder.

Our next stop was Jessie Gap which was also very nice and quite different to Emily Gap. We explored there for a while as well.

We cannot get over the number of wild budgies and finches we have seen. There must be thousands and there were certainly quite a few at Jessie Gap.

There are aboriginal rock paintings at both Emily & Jessie Gap.

We then headed off to Trephina Gorge but took an off road detour on the way. Raymond wanted to do some four-wheel driving and found a bit of a track which we followed for quite some time. We did a second off-road drive a bit later and stopped for coffee and cake.

At the entrance to Trephina Gorge we detoured to the John Hayes Rockhole. This is a 4km 4WD track and it took a long time for us to navigate it mainly because we stopped so often to take photos. The rockhole is a lovely spot and we had lunch and did a bit of a walk around. We climbed up to the ‘lookout’ but since it wasn’t signposted we aren’t sure we actually found it. Nonetheless the view was good from where we decided to stop.

We then drove into Trephina Gorge and as it was getting a bit late in the afternoon we decided to do the 20 minute Gorge Stroll. We walked for less than 5 minutes and discovered our path was blocked by water so we walked up and down but didn’t get into the Gorge itself. What we did see was pretty spectacular and the number of budgies, finches and other small birds was amazing!

This adventure took us about 9 hours and the total mileage (return trip) was only about 160km!

On the way back to Alice Springs the rain started in quite heavy in some spots and the clouds were covering the peaks of the Ranges. If you didn’t know better you would swear you were in the Grampians or similar – certainly not in the middle of the Australian desert!

A great day.

PS: We have a squillion more photos but we are only uploading a small handfull onto the blog because they take so long to upload! Anyone interested in seeing all the rest, let me know and we can arrange a get together on our return to Adelaide.
Royce did ask me to mention, if you want to comment on any of the blogs and you don't have a Yahoo or Google account, you can post a comment using "anonymous", but please make sure you put your name so we know who "anonymous" is.

Emily Gap