Ormiston Gorge

Saturday 31st May

A fair bit further along Namatjira Drive, about 130km west of Alice Springs, is a place I promised myself 30 years ago I would return to - Ormiston Gorge.  I wasn't disappointed either, it's as beautiful as I remembered it being.  We walked down to the waterhole, where the sun was shining on the orange rock walls of the gorge and the water was still.  There are ghost gums everywhere and along the dry creek bed there's a mass of rocks with a variety of colours, textures and patterns.  We both wanted to spend the rest of the day here.

There's a great walk which takes you fairly quickly up to the top of the cliff and then to a lookout which overhangs the gorge and waterhole.  Once we reached the lookout we were able to continue on for another half hour or so.  As there'd been rain in the centre the previous week, the water was too high to cross and do the whole loop walk but what we did was lovely.

Back down at the bottom, we gathered some lunch, chairs, pencils and sketchpad and settled in for the afternoon.  We must have looked pretty settled as a gentleman walking by asked how long we'd been living here :)   It was a most relaxing time.  I'd put a bubble blower into the troopy before we left and this seemed the perfect time to get it out and ... blow bubbles!  The breeze moved the bubbles around us and the sun reflected all the colours.  You can see them in the photo if you look carefully.

It didn't take long to get distracted by the rocks though ...

  

Such a beautiful place!

After spending a good part of the day here we headed out following the creek bed.  Stopping to take a photo, I turned to look at a cliff face and there above me, on a ledge, were 2 rock wallabies.  That was a lovely surprise!  

They were fairly high up, but the camera zoom picked them up

After a walk in the sandy creek bed we returned to the bitumen and journeyed on to a really nice bush camping area we'd seen earlier.  There were some campsites not too far down the the dirt road but with 4WD we could access the more remote and better sites.  We cooked dinner on the open fire and enjoyed the sunset and tranquility.