Day 34 Alice Springs

22 June

Today we travelled through the "West Macs", the West MacDonnell ranges to Glen Helen Gorge and now  I am feeling just a little bit tired, so I am going to keep this post short and sweet and let the photos do the talking.

Before we set out along the road to Glen Helen we detoured to Anzac Hill in the city to take that iconic photo of Alice that everyone takes.  Why should I be any different?  Here it is.

We discovered that the so-called Glen Helen Resort, which is located at Glen Helen Gorge, was even less of a resort than the Ross River Resort.  However, the Gorge was well worth photographing.

While at Glen Helen, we were impressed by a huge mountain that reared up to the west at the end of the road.  I suspect this is Mt Sonder, but it could be Haast's Bluff.  I will do more research on this matter.  Further research confirmed that it is Mt Sonder.

From there we called into Ormiston Gorge and took a short walk along the dry water course to the permanent water hole at the foot of a gigantic red cliff.  People swim in this waterhole despite being warned that it is extremely cold.

Then it was on to the Ochre Pits.  Ochre was, and still is, very important to Indigenous Australians.  They mix this clay-like substance with animal fat, usually goanna, and use it for body art.  This is one source of this highly tradeable commodity.

After this, we called into Standley Chasm, not far from Alice Springs.  This is yet another gorge and gap in the wall of the West Macs.  We started off by walking along a path and then the bed of yet another dry watercourse up this ever narrowing gorge.  The actual Chasm is at the end of this walk and is gigantic split in the rock wall as if some gigantic being as split the rock with an axe.  I have to apologise for these photographs.  Because of the very large range of light in the Chasm, it is very hard if not impossible to get the right exposure.  You either expose for the bright patches and underexpose the dark patches or expose for these and overexpose the lighter areas.  This is the best I could do.

That's it for today.  We may drive to Hermansburg Mission tomorrow, we will have to wait to see how we feel in the morning.