Gorgeous gorges and the art of sleeping in

After the early-morning hike up and around the rim of Kings Canyon, our group tour slowed down considerably.  After lunch, we piled into our truck-cum-bus-cum-home-on-wheels:

Our destination was the Glen Helen Resort, which sits at the foot of the West MacDonnell mountain range and about 100 kilometers from where we started, Alice Springs.  At Glen Helen we would lose most of our group, as (in a surprise to us) they had only signed on for a 2-night, 3-day tour and so would be picked up and driven to Alice that afternoon.

The road to Glen Helen turned out to be mostly dirt, not terrible, but still a bit slow-going and bouncy.  It was pretty scenic, however, and we got to see a few herds of wild horses, called Brumbies.

What we didn't see was one of the million or so wild camels that are roaming Australia's desert.  We did see domesticated camels, nowadays mostly used to carry tourists around a corral or for a sunset view of Uluru.  Yet, camels were the "desert trains" beginning in the late 19th century - the Europeans who first explored the Outback used them as their beasts of burden as did, later, the enterprises that first put up telegraph lines and eventually the railways, which would then make the camels obsolete economically.

Camels were imported from Asia and the Middle East; in fact, Afghanis were imported, too, to train and drive the camel trains.  At the Alice Springs airport we saw old photos of the area, including one of a makeshift mosque build by and for these early Muslim immigrants. Their value to the colonization project is commemorated in the name of the now-famous (Af)Ghan train that runs from Adelaide in the south through Alice to Darwin in the north. 

The site of our camp at Glen Helen was stunning, set against the backdrop of the West MacDonnells (you can see the permanent tents, the fire pit, and the rolled up swags).  Just below camp was the Fink River;  Kate captured this beautiful scene of reeds and grasses:

As we had no incredible sunrise spot to hike to, Norelle had mercy on us and let us sleep in to 6 or 6:30am, what a luxury!  Our final day roaming the Red Center was spend exploring various gorges cut by the Fink River through the mountains' red rock faces.  The gorges had names reminiscent of both the Aboriginal cultures and the European settlers: Redbank, Ormiston, Glen Helen, Serpentine. 

At Ormiston, we took a break from the hot sun to take a dep in a beautiful, refreshing swimming hole.

Our last adventure before hitting the road back to Alice Springs was an Ocre Pit, a old but still used "mine" where local Aboriginal people mined the rock they used for paint colors - for both spiritual and artistic purposes.  Because of the importance of this place, we were firmly prohibited from taking any ocre samples with us (a $500 fine made that point clearly!).  As the photo below shows, the seams of ocre have several distinct colors.



There you have it, our whirlwind tour of the Red
Center ... only took two weeks to tell the whole
story!