Alice Springs to Broken Hill

The East MacDonnell Ranges were another pretty drive with different scenery again.  The hills are redder and rougher.  Close to town we walked into Emily and Jessie Gaps and saw a few large Aboriginal rock paintings of the three caterpillars from the Dreamtime stories.  We also called in to see Corroboree Rock which was a place I remember visiting with Mum & Dad in 1971.  It was exactly as I recalled and is still an obviously important place in Aboriginal history.  Further out we took a walk along the creek bed and up and around the rim of Trephina Gorge which is a large sandy creek bed through deep red rocky ranges with more white ghost gums.  The largest Ghost Gum in Central Australia grows near the Gorge.

Further on we visited the Arltunga Gold Fields.  This is an area where gold was first discovered in the centre and where it was tough to survive let alone work and get rich.  There are many small surface hand dug mines and a few underground mines following the quartz veins some of which are open and can be entered.  There is one location where the Government of the day set up a battery (crushing plant) and assay room.  The many miners were 135kms from Alice Springs, many arriving on foot; and they could not make it into town to sell their gold nor could they afford to sink a bore to wash the crushed ore.  The Govt stepped in and built the bore, battery and several rock and mortar buildings to house the battery staff and offices.  Most of the buildings are in good condition but the rocky desert surroundings make it hard to understand how anyone would chose to live there.  It was a long drive back to town let alone having to walk it. 

Three Caterpillar rock art in Emily Gap

Cooroberie Rock side on

the 'Stage' high up on the south side

..from the back with the stage door the lower gap on the left

in Trephina Gorge

Trephine Gorge looking east along the Range

Central Australia's largest Ghost Gum ... it sure dwarfs us!!

Assayers House and the Managers House in background at Arltunga

Christmas Reef mine - one man worked this mine for 2 years and dug a hole 7.5m deep. Found little gold.

nearby underground pit. Tunnels are only 700mm high and follow the quartz veins.

Another very good attraction in Alice is the Transport Museum.  It has a couple of sections with one featuring Railways and the Old Ghan, and the other all about Trucks and road transport.  It was well worth a few hours wandering the dozens (hundreds?) of transport vehicles of all ages shapes and sizes and all the associated displays.  A very impressive display is the Kenworth Pavillion which houses all of the Kenworth truck models made in Australia and there are heaps.  Many of the huge road train prime movers on display are the prototypes and/or ‘first of a new model’ vehicles provided by the factory.  They are fully optioned and brand new and must represent a few dollars worth.  There are also a few antique cars and motorbikes in an upstairs are including a 1927 Rolls, a T Model and an Indian motorcycle.

First Australian designed and built Kenworth

None to subtle but gets its message across quite clearly!!!

the (fastest?) Indian twin cylinder

a small part of the display

a couple of very old busses including a sold wheeled double decker

Driver comfort was not a priority in the old double decker.

Modified Landrover used by Lassiter's family trying to re-discover his reef of golf in the western desert.

Alice Springs was an enjoyable place to visit and worth the trip up and back.  We set off and made two overnight stops free camping in roadside parks each night.  There is always company nearby and we were surprised at the number of caravans on the road, most heading north for the winter.  Our second free camp was beside Lake Hart which is one of several large salt lakes along the way.  The sunsets and sunrises were very pretty.  After a night in Port Augusta to pick up some mail and supplies we set off on Friday headed for Broken Hill.  The wind had picked up quite strong and would have been a headwind all the way to Broken Hill so we decided to travel down the coast a bit to Port Pirie and then head east.  Smoko at Port Germein was very pleasant on the foreshore of the Gulf beside the longest timber pier in Australia.

Good to see the Wedge Tailed Eagles are thick out here

they are a big bird with a large wing span

sunset over Lake Hart salt lake

sunrise on the Ghan tracks between the camp and the lake

the salt just looks like water at sunrise and even has waves in it..

Port Germein light and pier

Between Port Germein and Port Pirie is a great roadside store with fruit, veges, seafood, smoked meats, and huge range of homemade jams, pickles, chutneys, etc.  I can highly recommend the ‘Harry’s Home Made’ Mustard Pickles and after dinner tonight, I reckon they are as good as white sauce on corned meat. 

 Port Pirie was surprisingly pretty with several green waterfront parks and good facilities.  It looked a nice town and we lunched in a foreshore park overlooking the commercial fishing boats and export ore ships.  We were a bit put off when listening to the radio on the way out when they were talking about the high incidence of cancers and lead poisoning in the town and were considering hosing down all the playground equipment in the parks each morning to reduce contamination!!! 

With the wind and a few very pretty little old rural towns along the way we never made it to Broken Hill but chose to spend another night free camping along the way.  Peterborough was one of those towns with lovely old fashioned shops, a huge Newsagency/tourism centre and a very good Steam Train Museum.   The overnight park further east we chose had one other van there already which turned out to be another couple who have also exited a Home Hardware and have been travelling for over three years.  We spent a very pleasant evening reminiscing beside the fire with Steve and Julie.

Peterborough Institute building

Broken Hill is very different to most of the country towns we have been through lately and looks very similar to Kalgoorlie in the west.  The mine mullock heaps dominate the scenery as it is in the middle of town.  Quite recently there has been a Visitors Centre and display, a restaurant/café, and a memorial to the 800 odd miners killed in the Pits since mining began in the 1800’s.  I was surprised how many accidents involved explosives but couldn’t help smiling at the poor bugger who was killed when he fell off his bicycle.

A visit to the Pro Hart Gallery was very interesting and gave us both a new appreciation of the man and his work.  He used several very different styles some of which appealed to us a lot and others not so much.  On display were several Rolls Royce’s and Bentley’s Pro had collected and drove around Broken Hill and include the Rolls he painted with outback scenes.  Most of the cars still have current registration.  

A couple of Pro Hart Rolls Royces.

Wall of remembrance for 72 miners who died in Broken Hill pits

Mining continues for solver, lead & zinc after 135 years

relaxing on the Broken Hill sized park bench

Old head frame and buildings in the centre of town

Main street architecture from more prosperous times

one of 12 sculptures outside town

back towards town after sunset

Our favourite photo.

We went for a drive about 10kms west of Broken for the sunset to a hilltop area where twelve large sculptures have been placed following a symposium of international artists were commissioned to create native scenes from huge local sandstone blocks.  The art is impressive but the sunset was even more so and was also very popular with a hundred odd tourists clambering for the best photo point. 

King's Canyon & Alice Springs

The week started with a shift from Uluru to King’s Canyon which are very similar desert  campgrounds.  At King’s Canyon we were lucky enough to get a good site in the shade under a large gum tree looking straight out over the ranges containing the Canyon. The sunset view of the range was better from our van than from the lookout platform a short walk from the campground.  There has been a major bush fire through the region recently which has stripped most vegetation back to bare red sand hills and wiped out the Kathleen Springs parking and viewing area which is now closed.  We set off early on the second day and managed the ‘Rim Walk’ which is a 6.4km walk around the top edge of the canyon.  It is a 3 to 4 hour difficult walk and we were satisfied that we saw it all.  The scenery is unique with large slabs of sandstone fractured into cube shapes and then weathered into domes.  There are great views into the gorge from several lookouts and the ‘Garden of Eden’ gorge side walk is very pretty given the surrounding desert.  This is a long narrow side gorge into the main canyon and has water along most of its length with large cycads and beautiful white gums.  There is also a large swimming pool at the junction with the main canyon which has developed from another fault line at 90 degrees to the Garden of Eden gorge.

Mt Connor - often mistaken as the first view of Ayers Rock but still 150kms away

Ranges containing Kings Canyon from campground

Half way up the rise to the top of the Rim Walk

Walking on the edge

At the top and enjoying the shade

On the Rim with the campground just above the front foot

A dome and the red wall on the opposite side of the canyon

On top of a Dome

Garden of Eden - side gorge to King's Canyon

Weathered cubes/domes up top

Overhanging wall - last significant rock fall was in the 1930's

cute little Holly Grevillea

Cycad measured at over 400 years old

Next morning we were happy with a much shorter walk along the Canyon floor amongst the beautiful red boulders and white and grey gums.  We also saw more cute ‘Holly Grevillea’ bushes which as their name suggests have stiff ‘holly’ leaves and miniature red grevillea flowers.  Despite catching up with some very friendly campers again we elected to set off early Monday afternoon and free camp along the road towards the Alice.  We got a couple of hundred km’s under our belts which left ‘only’ 310 km for Tuesday.  We met up with Roger and Caroline from Maitland who we have seen at a couple of camps since the roadside free camp on the border and also chatted with fellow vanners from Moranbah and Gosford, which made our stay very enjoyable.

Start of the bottom of canyon walk

We over nighted at another roadside free camp on the way into Alice Springs.  It had good shade and clean bagged bins and we were able to camp well in off the road so the traffic noise was negligible.  The flies however were the worst we had ever seen; even thicker than at Cecil Plains in summer.  We have been buying diesel in ‘just enough’ amounts lately as the price has been up a bit. $2.03 at Uluru, $2.33 at Kings Canyon, and $1.98 at Erldunda on the turnoff has made us aware of the cost of travel.  We are happy to be averaging 14.63 litres per 100km over 51,500km since we left Brisbane in August 2011 towing the van with our worst leg being 21.1 ltrs/100km (into a howling wind) and our best 9.9 ltrs/100km (without the van on around the Eyre Peninsula).

Alice Springs is a big town and has changed a lot since I last saw it.  It has all the facilities including indoor pool and a good well lit footy stadium, plus all the shops and takeaway food joints of course.  It also has a very good Golf Course with 18 holes built around the hills in amongst a suburb of very nice new homes.  The casino is in the same suburb.  The course is in very good condition with smooth large greens and good bunkers with the red ranges in the background of each hole.  A trip out to the old Telegraph Station reminded us again how tough the pioneers of these parts had it.  A single wire telegraph line was run from Adelaide to Darwin using 36,000 wooden hand cut poles in less than 2 years in the 1800’s including 5 repeater stations along the route.  This was joined to an undersea cable from Darwin to Asia and on to Britain and cut the communication time from 3 months to 2 hours.  Operators manned the repeater stations 24/7 and when a message came through in Morse code, it was copied and re-sent on down the line, one message at a time, one direction at a time.  The diaries tell of the heat, the cold, and the flies, and the supplies once every few months.

The Telegraph Exchange - note 9 wires - 1 in, 1 out, 7 local.

We spent a full day out amongst the West MacDonnell Ranges with stops at most gorges and tourist sites.  Simspons Gap, Standley Chasm, Ellery Creek Big Hole, Ormiston Gorge, Glen Helen Gorge, Mt Sonder lookout, and the Ochre Pits were all visited and were all impressive.  The water and lush growth along the gorge floors together with the beautiful white Ghost Gums made for some pleasant viewing after the desert scenes we have become used to.  The walks are all well maintained.  The colours of Standley Chasm in the noon sun and the contrast of red rock, dark water and white ghost gums was very memorable.  There are campgrounds at several gorges and our pick is Ormiston Gorge. It has a small kiosk and a short walk into the wide sandy Finke River with red cliffs and a large waterhole.  We had afternoon tea at Mount Sonder Lookout which is just west of Glen Helen Gorge and has great views of the ranges north and south with the prominent peaks of Mt Sonder (1,380mASL) in the west and Mt Giles (1,389mASL) to the east.  They are very impressive peaks and the long ranges running east west clearly demonstrate the faults where the earth’s crust cracked and was pushed up onto its edge many moons ago.  The Finke River runs through just below the lookout and has a large waterhole and green reeds/grass surrounding it following recent rain.  The Ochre Pits where the aborigines have taken the different coloured ochres for painting for tens of thousands of years is another example of horizontally laid down beds being pushed into vertical layers.  A creek has cut through the beds and the cliffs are beds of very pretty colours from pure white, through light to bright yellows, and on to oranges and reds where iron has washed through and rusted.

Simpsons Gap

Standley Chasm just pre-noon

Standley Chasm walk in

Ghost gum that got tired and lay over

Ellery Big Hole - popular swimming hole but cold!!!

Glen Helen Gorge - 9 species of desert fish live in this gorge

West MacDonnell Ranges over the Finke River

Mt Sonder

Ormiston Gorge swimming hole

Another impressive gum

Ochre Pits

We have spent a quiet day in camp today with the sewing machine back in action and a game of golf enjoyed.  Tomorrow we head east for another days drive.