West Macdonnell Ranges
Wow. We’re in love with the Red Centre! The landscape and beauty of our vast country simply amazes us. As we’ve been travelling north from Adelaide, the scenery has grown increasingly stunning and just when we think it can’t get any better – it does.
The West Macdonnell Ranges are our new favourite part of the world. They provide something for everyone – giant rock faces and boulders, a beautiful array of trees, plants and flowers, unique birds and wildlife, and tranquil waterholes.
We spent only three nights in the ‘West Mac’ (as people call it) but could’ve spent much longer exploring this glorious place. We spent two nights at the Ormiston Gorge campground and one night at the Ellery Creek Big Hole campground.
During this time, we visited:-
- Ormiston Gorge, doing the Ghost Gum Walk to the lookout and then walking along the gorge back to the campsite
- Glen Helen (note that the resort and campgrounds are now permanently closed)
- Ellery Creek Big Hole, visiting the waterhole twice and doing the Dolomite walk
- Standley Chasm, which we visited at midday to see the sun shining between the two sheer rock faces
- Simpsons Gap, where we saw two black-footed rock wallabies and admired the towering cliffs of red rocks
We then went to Palm Valley in the Finke Gorge National Park for 2 nights. We included this in our itinerary after a wonderful customer of ours shared their recommendation on a social media post of our trip. That is the beauty of our Maverick family – our customers and followers – are always willing to help one another and share the love!
We added two days onto our trip to fit in Palm Valley and boy are we glad we did. It was such an awe-inspiring place. The best part was being able to use the Facon 17 on the high-clearance 4WD corrugated road from Hermannsburg to Palm Valley campground. The dirt road is 16km of corrugation, rocks and sandy creek beds. We dropped the tire pressure to 40psi on the RAM and the Falcon 17 and handled the road easily. Hudson thought it was hilarious getting bounced from side to side in his car seat!
Once at the campground, we unhooked the caravan, dropped the tire pressure on the RAM to 30psi and drove the 4km high-clearance 4WD track into Palm Valley. You aren’t allowed to take caravans past the campground and we quickly found out why! The road was really rocky, often with steep large rocks to climb down or over. We decided the RAM needs a lift kit, lol.
There are two walking routes in Palm Valley and we chose the shorter 1 hour walk, simply because we wanted to get back to camp before dark. It was truly magnificent seeing the huge palms there, the tallest of which are 300 years old.
The next day we did the long Mpaara Walk, which they say takes about 2 hours to complete but took us about 3.5 hours with Hudson. We were happy to take our time and admire the views at the top of the sandstone hills, truly majestic!
After 5 glorious days in the region, we were north-bound for the Devil’s Marbles and Daly Waters.
