2012 Outback Trip  –  NorthWest Australia

•  4 Weeks  -  10500 Kilometers:
• Home – Alice Springs – Tanami Track – Broome – Gibb River Road – Kimberley – Katherine – Home

What a trip this has been!  When I look at the pictures it seems like it happened yesterday.

So let me take you through this unique experience and through some unforgettable country!

Day 1 Start of the journey

‘Home’ is in the Victorian Highlands, in the Melbourne / Ballarat / Bendigo triangle. We live near the town of Trentham, 115 km northwest of Melbourne in country Victoria. This adventure was always going to be a lengthy trip with great distances to be covered quickly between points of interest where I would linger longer. As I had driven to Alice Springs a number of times before, the strategy was to get going early and get the first 2000 km done as quickly as possible. I had seen Ayers Rock, the Olgas and Kings Canyon before, but never been to the Finke River.

The real start of this adventure was the Finke Gorge National Park where I wanted to explore the river course and follow the river bed from one end of the park to the other. This ancient landscape has the claim of being the oldest river bed in the world.

I left at 4:30 am in my trusty Nissan Patrol and wound my way in the direction of Adelaide. 75km short of Adelaide, at Murray Bridge, I headed north towards the Barossa valley so that I would not get caught up in the busy Adelaide districts. The destination for the evening was Port Augusta just over 1000km from where I started. I reached that in the late afternoon and had a well-deserved rest. Port Augusta is a crossroad for traffic travelling from/to Adelaide, Flinders Ranges, Alice Springs and the Nullarbor Plain.

For the last 100+ km the road north to Port Augusta has the Spencer Gulf on the one side and the southern Flinders Ranges on the other. This makes for great scenery. The old part of Port Augusta is quaint with many historical buildings. The landscape becomes increasingly sparse.

Spencer Gulf in the distance

Day 2 Breaking the back of the distance

Early the next morning I collapsed my tent, packed things away and headed off for Coober Pedy along the Stuart Highway. The first stop was  Coober Pedy itself,  some 540 km north. I had been in the region a few times before. Thus I did not want to explore and so continued north after a quick refuel and a pie, which is an icon for hungry travelers in Australia.

The area around Coober Pedy is littered with chalk colored mine dumps of varying sizes. The largest are the size of small hills. These are the remains of prior mining attempts where people have dug into the earth to find Opals. Everybody knows about these multicolored gems that polish up spectacularly and cost a small fortune. Every here and there one can see the rusted remains of long abandoned plant and equipment.

This all faded away as the long straight Stuart highway ran away into the north. It may come as a surprise to many that the landscape is not always barren. There are many areas where shrubs, trees and grasses paint a lovely picture of landscapes splattered with specs of green and brown. It is clear that animals do live here. If one is lucky enough to travel here after some rains the landscape displays a carpet of many colored flowers and blossoms. This is the land of the massive ranches or cattle stations.

Trees along the road with mount Connor in the distance

By the late afternoon I had arrived 20 km south of the turnoff to the Ernest Giles Rd. This road is where I could turn west for the rear entrance of the Finke Gorge National Park. Armed with nothing except my Map of the Northern territory I could start my outback adventure for real the next morning.

I pulled off the road and drove a few hundred meters into the scrub and set up my camp for the night. I had covered just over 2000 km. As I sat around a small camp fire I heard the silence wash over me. Not a sound, just nothing to be heard. It is the most beautiful feeling. Most people do not travel at night out there. So there are no vehicles to be heard. If you look up you can see a billion stars up there just beyond the reach of your fingertips.

Day 3 Doing the Finke River

I got up to another great sunny day in central Australia. After the normal morning stuff I continued for the last 20 odd kilometers north before turning west onto the Ernest Giles rd. It was a real joy to leave the main road and get into the red dirt country again.

I soon saw the road signs for the Henbury meteorite craters along the way. Never having heard of these craters I was intrigued enough to make a detour and find out more. The official description reads:

“Walk into an other-worldly landscape shaped by a meteor hitting the earth at Henbury Meteorites Conservation Reserve. Located 145 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs, the reserve contains 12 craters that were formed when the Henbury Meteor, weighing several tonnes and accelerating to over 40,000 kilometres per hour, disintegrated before impact.”

I followed the signs to the park and did the walk around the craters. The path takes one along the crater walls around the bigger remaining craters. It was interesting to read about how small a meteorite had caused such havoc .Very interesting, especially as I had intended to visit the Wolfe Creek crater later on this trip.

Map in hand I headed west again until I had worked out the small unsigned road that would take me to the rear end of the Finke Gorge National Park. The trick was to turn left at a little sign that said ‘muddy well’. The track (there are no roads here) was about 40km long and took me across a salt pan and after that through several stands of an indigenous needle Pine trees. There were many twists and turns that prevented any speedy progress. Of interest was the abundance of melons that lie around the area. I cut one in half but it was very bitter to the taste.

Many people think that central Australia is flat as a tack with very low altitudes. This is not so. There are many hills and very long mountain ranges. The average height of the landscape is 500 – 600 meters above sea level.

After an hour or so I reached the gate at the rear entry to the park. So far so good, as long as one avoided the wash outs in the track. After a few more kilometers I reached the Finke river and that presented a totally new problem. The washed out bedrock of the river presented with layers of granite displaying ledges that were up to over 50 cm in places. In other places the ledges were very narrow. I had to pick a path across the river bed and then fill up the gullies with rocks so that I could get my Patrol across. The crossing took at least half an hour. I decided to stop for lunch beneath some shady gum trees after that.

If one looks along the course of the river one can see many water holes that seem to survive the drought. The river is bordered by sandy river banks on both sides with very large gum trees offering shade. The banks then run up into craggy hills that are very old; around 1500 million years old. One can see immediately signs of severe weathering where the rock formations have crumbled and turned into dust and small debris.

I took a number of pictures of the river banks and the hills. When I looked at the downloaded pictures on the computer I got a good surprise. What I had not noticed when taking the pictures was the Dingo skulking in the grass and watching me from a safe distance.

I drove along the track which follows the river course and made very slow progress. The track on the river bed runs over round rocks for many kilometers. This is low range second gear work and is also very hard on the springs. Progress is very slow and it took many hours to get through the park. Some people had set up camp and were enjoying the scenery. I had planned to get to Alice Springs by the evening. So I kept going.

At the entrance to the park is a rock painting of some tubers. Aboriginals used their art also to communicate to other wanderers about the types of food that are available in the area. This is an example.

I left the park and headed towards Alice Springs. Along the way the West MacDonnell ranges cut a delightful scene in the late afternoon sun.