Disappointment in the Western MacDonnell Ranges

We drove 125 kilometres west along Namatjira Drive from Alice Springs to find the attraction that we planned to visit was closed.

Not far from Alice Springs we came across the grave of Rev John Flynn, the founder of the Flying Doctor Service. It sits under a high bluff and is topped with a rock that came from the Devils Marbles area south of Tennant Creek.

The Western MacDonnell Ranges are very scenic and I think that this is one of the best scenic roads in the Northern Territory. It follows the valley between two lines of hills in the mountain range. I found a spot where I had taken a photo once before that looks to me like a classic outback landscape scene. The white trunked ghost gum tree nicely frames the mountain range as you look to the west.

Along the way towards Glen Helen, there are two wonderful lookouts. The Point Howard Lookout provides stunning views in almost all directions.

Another, the Neil Hargrave Lookout is a little higher and also offers a nice view of the valley. Both of these lookouts are easily accessible along a well made access road.

The first waterhole that we came across was the Ellery Creek Big Hole. It is about five kilometres off the road and has plenty of parking and a number of picnic tables. It is only a short walk of about eighty metres from the carpark to the water. 

Above the waterhole is a cliff face which has been twisted into improbable shapes. You can see twisted folds of rock which formed deep in the earth, Great heat and pressure then pushed up 10,000 metre high mountains. Three hundred and fifty million years of erosion have almost worn them away, exposing the deeper folded rocks. These rocks were formed from mud and sand which were deposited as flat layers on the bed of an inland sea. If Australia is not the oldest continent it is certainly the flattest. Only six per cent of the country has an elevation above 700 metres. 

We continued along Namitjira Drive to the Finke River which still has some water in it after recent rains. This apparently is one of the oldest rivers in the world. It  courses through the Northern Territory and the state of South Australia – one of the four main rivers of the Lake Eyre Basin. It only flows for only a few days each year. 

Just across the river is a lookout from which you can see Mt Sonder.  I don’t know much about this mountain other than it appeared extensively. in Albert Nanitjira’s paintings.He was a famous aboriginal artist who was born at Hermansberg in 1902. He died in 1959 leaving an extensive legacy of watercolour paintings behind him.

Our main destination was to be Glen Helen, It has a beautiful waterhole edged by red quartzite cliffs. Although the name originally referred only to the glen through which the Finke River flows today it has come to mean the Glen Helen Resort, the gorge and the surrounding 368 ha Nature Park. The resort was once part of a cattle station but it has had several owners over the last few decades. The current owner is spending a lot of money refurbishing the old resort and the site is closed due to building works and a lack of a reliable water supply. I was quite disappointed about this but I do have some photos of the water in the gorge from a previous visit. The best view that we could get was from the road, some distance away. 

Seeing that we could not get access to Glen Helen, we retreated to Ormiston Gorge, a few kilometres back. It is located on Ormiston Creek a tributary of the Finke River. It is often regarded as the most beautiful of all the gorges in the West MacDonnells. In the gorge, you can see spectacular river red gums and ghost gums as well as euros, rock wallabies, reptiles in the summer months.

The road back to Alice Springs, whilst the same road, gave us some very different views in the opposite direction. This is really a very scenic part of Australia.