Day 145 | Ridgetop campground again: a day off, time for a walk up a hill

rest day

Happy? You betcha.

This phase of my little adventure may be nearing the finale, ie, hit one of the big supermarkets in Alice, but today I’m verging on ecstatic. A lovely, calm morning that turns into the most pleasant background for a day in weeks, there’s even plenty of blue sky.

I wander up Mt Sonder, known by its Aboriginal name as Rwetyepme, the fourth highest hillock in the NT, 1380 m high, well, let’s be truthful, it ain’t exactly the Himalayas, two hour walk to the top, less coming down, in time not distance, even for someone whose leg muscles are well accustomed to a daily bout of exercise.

I’m happy as climbing that hill, you get most of the steep stuff over in the first section then only having the odd steepish climb, a healthy 8km each way.

But at the top, not going to call it a summit, is one of the great views of the NT, in fact Australia, it’s almost 360°, you can see Haasts Bluff, 64 km to the west, back to Gosse Bluff, 37 km and the full West Mac range, from Mt Zeil, the highest pinnacle in the NT, 1531 m, 27 km away, all the way around to Mt Giles, the third highest, only just pipping the lump I’m perched on.

There’s the much smaller range, not sure of the name there, I’ll be cycling alongside tomorrow not so far to the south but there’s no substantial creeks flowing down the wide valley. Instead, for some crazy reason, like some junior planner drew a doodle on the map of the region, the creek coming out of Redbank Gorge, Davenport Creek, joins up with the one in Ormiston Gorge to form the Finke River, the oldest watercourse in the world, which flows along that doodle, on occasions for the last 100 million years, through a couple of mountain ranges, well, gashes through hills anyway, Glen Helen Gorge, off to its extinction in the Simpson Desert 700km away.

That’s whenever it flows, the water component of the Finke is not exactly a permanent phenomenon, mostly it’s a sandy creek bed, but when the rare humungous downpour arrives from the Tropics, usually summer, the catchment being vast and the slope not insignificant, the Finke rages 10 m, 15 m deep through the bottleneck of the gorges, until, well, it always putters out in the Simpson.

There’s a bit of haze, but the colours are only slightly muted, reddish, mauve, violet, basically either end of the spectrum will do. The humps and curves around Mt Giles are audacious, the shapes immediately south look so precise, as if they were done with a comb.

When I came up here first time around there was a cast of thousands, well I actually counted 78 names for the day in the book at the summit, most in two big buses on a school trip from Darwin.

Today I had the day, the hill, that view, to myself.

Like many intense landscape experiences, sunrise over Lake Eyre, sunset over the Tanami, huddled in Cathedral Gorge in Purnululu, or watching the busting surf in the Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park, the mind can scarcely take it in, photography a poor substitute.

At least you can think, I am here, I am thrilled and I am living this incredible life.

Standing on the cliff at the top looking out to forever and ever. I knew I had the perfect day.