Day 319 | Bluff campsite: climb every mountain
rest day
We thought you might be a goanna, says Ollie.
There’s a couple of photographers camped next door, if sleeping in Buzz the ex-rental Hiace camper van is indeed camping. Silvi has to make do with the tent, built for 4. They call it glamping.
They are up early photographing the gradations of light on the jagged bluff across the creek, from first light until full light, not moving the tripod.
By the time I emerge the bluff has a distinct orange glow, OK, I didn’t need to get out of the tent to know that.
Another day of wandering, this time without the 14 days of food, etc, just the daypack, provisions mainly water.
These jaded eyes, all gorged out on the gorgeous West Mac gorges appreciated the short but colourful Trephina, modest aboriginal rock art, massive blue sky, clouds now banished, orange red cliffs, platinum white of stray ghost gums.
My genetic disposition, as befits the standard Kiwi, led me up the hill on the Ridgetop Walk, at the end of the ridge a bluff with a view all the way west to Mt Gillen just west of Alice, but more interesting some curious, seemingly half finished bumps, giant termite mounds of the flattened variety in the foreground.
Highlight of the day was the John Hayes Gorge, much tighter, steep sided, chiselled out of the orange rock, ending in a 15 m waterfall, no water actually falling on this occasion, just before the end of the “6.5 hour” trail.
Then, in the way that some things work out when they don’t really matter, a group of hikers from Adelaide I’d met further up the hill, popped out having taken the rim variation of the trail and offered a ride right to my tent front door.