Mon 30th – We packed up pretty smartly and headed into Redbank Gorge. It’s a 1.2km walk to the gorge. The path is not well defined and at times you are walking along the creek bed and doing a lot of rock hopping. It’s well worth the walk, tall red cliffs follow the creek bed coming together at the end to form an amazing chasm. A lovely but chilly waterhole at the base of the chasm stopped us from exploring further in. Would of been so great to be able to wandered through it. You can see why the place is name Redbank, the cliffs are so red. We are constantly amazed where trees are able to grow, holding on precariously to the cliff walls.
Oh oh we just saw our first wild camel ugly looking thing that is was, but so excited to see. It was just walking along the bitumen when we first saw it.
Driving into Gosse Bluff we saw a group of about 20 camels. Varying in colour from a sandy colour to nearly black. Not the nice looking caramel colour in good nic we see at the zoos. Rough and mean looking out here.
Gosse Bluff is a ring of rugged hills approximately 5kms in diameter created by an ancient meteoric crater some 140 million years ago. There is a short loop walk and a lookout that climbs a steep hill that gives amazing views of the crater. This is scared land for the Aboringals, so visitors must respect the place and keeps to the destination tracks. The place guarded by killer bees.
We have seen several signs since we have been in the Alice area warning about bees. Especially on taps as they seek out any moisture. When we have stopped for morning teas or lunch we have had bees come onto our dish cloth but mate not like this. Our kitchen was swarmed by bees, we had to eat in the car and couldn’t wash any dishes. It was throw them in the sink after fishing the bees out and a team effort to pack things up. Me waving a blue lunch plate Chris waving his hat. I gave a few a sever headache and Chris kept complaining that he had killer bees flying at him after being hit by a blue plate. We laughed about it once we were back in the safety of the ute and getting the hell out of there. Bee Warned.
A permit is needed to drive on the Mereenie Loop road as it goes through Aboringal land. We purchased ours from Glen Helen Resort for $5. The price varies depending on where you purchase it. It’s $3.50 from the info centre in Alice. Trouble is you have to specify the day you are going to travel on it, since we didn’t know we had no choice but to purchase it closer to the time. The pass includes a little booklet pointing out places of interest along the way.
One of the interesting features on the Mereenie Loop.
We pulled into the Jump-up rest area lookout, just for a look and was surprised to find signs saying you can camp here for 24hrs. All other info we had read said it was day use only. We have pulled ourselves into a little nook and set up camp for the night saving us $42.
