Day: 10 (Alice - Side of Road (West Macs))
Distance Travelled: 255kms
Weather: Fine, sunny, hot!
Today's Biggest Challenges: More dirt tracks (sand, bleh), and the intense heat in the gorges.
What I've learned from today: That the West Macs are one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Highlights of today: We rose this morning after sleeping a little better last night (probably from exhaustion) and packed up the rest of the gear. I headed off a little earlier to the Watershed cafe to meet up with Leticia, the Alice Springs Crew Leader. I arrived at the trendy little cafe to order some coffee and we found each other without any problems. It was fantastic to meet a local, especially someone familiar with scouting, and just to be able to ask heaps of questions! Stories were thick and fast and we had a good yarn while waiting for the others. Stories about freelance riding around the desert and monster python snakes up near Katherine, it was fantastic to explore the differences between the centre and the south coast. Eventually the others arrived and we enjoyed a yarn and the free WiFi till we had to leave and start our West Macs adventures!
Our camping neighbour at the Alice caravan park had given us a sheet the day before of all the best attractions in the ranges to explore. On advice, we decided to skip over Stanley Chasm and did a select few for the time we had available.
First stop was Simpson’s Gap. A short drive into the area, we arrived about 11am which was a great time to see the sun peering over the slit that was the creek gap. Much to Kristal’s delight, we spotted some shy, cute little rock wallabies among the boulders on the east side of the gap. The water was rather rank at one end and we had to steer clear for the algae in it (I think it was toxic if I remember correctly) however it was magnificent. I took advantage of the amazing acoustics and sang Pippin’s song from The Lord of the Rings into the echo… a memory I won’t easily forget! So beautiful. We took a number of photos and decided to head off before the tourist buses came for the midday viewing.
Next stop was the Ellery Creek Hole. Another gorgeous waterhole with a fantastic area for swimming in deeper water. Incredible rock strata layers bent mysteriously around each other along one of the western walls and we searched in vain for a fossil - but the rocks are just too old!
It’s funny, Kristal and I are getting rather a reputation in the outback now as ‘those girls on the motorbikes’. We have met people back in Oodnadatta and Alice who we keep meeting again now, especially in this area as everyone is jumping from attraction to attraction. This came rather in handy for what happened next.
We left Ellery Creek to head to Ormiston Gorge. Kristal and I were pretty keen and we eventually lost sight of the boys. We arrived at the turn-off and Kristal headed down while I waited for the boys. I waited for two minutes before deciding I’d bake myself into a migraine if I didn’t find some shade in the heat, so I headed down to the gorge as well (the boys knew we were headed there anyway). We arrived and waited some time before deciding to have a look in the gorge and see if, for some reason, they had perhaps gotten ahead of us and we may have found them there. Still no sign of them. An hour after we saw them last, we decide to ask the next entering vehicle if they had seen the others broken down. The car we waved down turned out to be people we had met before and yes, they had seen the others broken down on the side of the road about 15 minutes behind. So with a sinking feeling we decided it would be best to push ahead to Glen Helen to get fuel before heading back to find the others. Just as we saddled up, however, the boys drove in with everything seemingly intact and we ran to greet them! Turned out, they told us, (between filling up bottles at the rain water outlet), that the radiator hoses had been shaken completely out of their sockets on the dirt roads and all they had to do was shove them back in again and re-fill the water outlet. Phew! Could have been so much worse.
We pushed on to Glen Helen for a quick refuel and lunch in the shade. Didn’t quite match what we had seen so far but would be worth coming back here and checking out the sights further. Met more German tourists (why so many Germans…? no idea!) walking around before heading off. I took a few photos of the nearby mountains and we were on our way.
Scenery was just beautiful and the road started to get more interesting and twisty on our way to King’s Canyon. Our last stop was the lookout to the Gosse Bluff crater, a massive crater on the western outskirts of the West Macs. We had no time to enter but from the lookout on the hill was an incredible sight.
The sun was beginning to get quite low in the sky so we pushed on to the Larapinta Drive junction and from there took it slower on the dirt road towards King’s. After an hour of this it became impossible to see anything and our eyes hurt a lot from the sun glare and the dust, even with sunnies and helmets on, so I swapped out with Stu (although I must say, the knobbies were making a huge difference in grip on the dirt road!). We pushed on for another 20 minutes, letting the riders make the decisions on when to stop (if necessary), until Kristal had a massive fishtail and she called us off. We found an appropriate spot on the side of the road and set up camp for the night.
Wow, I must say, this is probably the best night so far! There is something just so exciting about making it up as you go, and tonight is exactly that. We made one of the better recipes for dinner (sausage hotpot) and Anthony found enough fallen wood to make a small fire to herd off anything unwanted. Surrounded by absolute pitch black, the most deafening silence I’ve ever heard and shooting stars by the dozen, we ate by the firelight and sipped tea while singing campfire songs and listening to ‘the adventures of Kristal’, Kristal’s no-end of stories that prove she has nine lives! We were even shocked to find out that this whole time she has been riding with one eye literally half-blind from a years-ago accident. Well, the things you find out!
Finally we settled down to sleep as the moon began rising over the horizon. Tomorrow, the final 100km push to King’s Canyon and then on to Uluru! Till then, MMG
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