Trephina Gorge, Jessie and Emily Gorges, then back to traffic and crowds

Trephina Gorge is another gem with bright red rocky sides and loads of birds. We saw the black faced cuckoo shrike, variegated fairy wren, lemon bellied honeyeater, black honeyeater, white plumed honeyeater and painted honey eater and a hooded robin and red capped robin and a red backed kingfisher. We’ve nearly run out of food (mainly because there’s hardly any shops between Katherine and Alice but also because of a lack of planning) so we created a baked beans with tinned corn and potato bake, topped with crushed garlic toasts and parmesan – do you recognise this, Heidi? Russ said you used to make something like this!

 This is called a holly grevillea for obvious reasons

 You can see all the little creeks that feed into the gorge, as near horizontal lines running into the middle

 The mistletoe bird

 The variegated fairy wren

 We think this is a baby hooded robin

N'dhala Gorge all to ourselves

One of the great joys is having a spectacular site just to yourselves and this was our experience at N’Dhala Gorge, where there are apparently around 1500 petroglyphs, pictures carved into the stone, some dating back 10,000 years. The road in is corrugated with 4 river crossings, and takes you through the valley between mountains of all colours on both sides. Reading up back at the homestead, the different coloured mountains differ in ages by hundreds of millions of years. The beautiful weather is back – hooray!

Historical Arltunga and zebra finches, to Ross River Retreat

The Altunga Historical Reserve preserves old stone buildings from the local gold rush that resulted in the establishment of Alice Springs. The delightful zebra finches swarmed around from tree to tree and we were thrilled to be able to get some photos.

The road from Arltunga to Ross River Retreat was one of the roughest we've driven so far, but full of wonder and colour, even on an overcast day.

Ross River Retreat is a joy, set right in between exquisite red and ochre mountains that date in the thousands of millions of years. The host is a character and enjoys trying to entice his guests to have dinner and help the business. The homestead was built in 1898 of stone and big beams and whitewashed inside to great effect.

Enthralled by the East Macdonnells

After Aileron and the 10m high Altijere man and woman, and Barrow Creek with one of the old telegraph stations, we turned up the Plenty Highway in pursuit of Tower Rock, a quiet conservation reserve that looked great in a camping book. After 45km of dreadful corrugations we decided to stay at the campsite at Hart’s Range, called Spotted Tiger. We were the only ones in the campsite and it seemed no-one had been there for some time. The water had been cut off, the solar panels and most of the infrastructure had been demolished and stolen so it was a strange feeling, 8km from Hart’s Range which itself only had a relief manager in the very small store.

We’d been hanging out for some real peace and quiet away from the crowds so this was it. We climbed some nearby hills and marvelled at the remaining Mica from the mines and the stunning nearby red/purple hills of the Hart’s Range. Spotted Tiger had been the biggest mica supplier in the world during WW2 when it was used for electrical parts.

We decided not to risk the next 100km into the art gallery and conservation, assuming the road would be similar to the last 45km. We continued back west along the Plenty, then south on Pinnacle Road and along dirt roads to the friendly Old Ambalindum Homestead where we stayed. This part of the East Macdonnells is certainly very quiet in spite of the beauty, probably because the roads are pretty bad.