As planned we set off this morning towards Kings Canyon. Before leaving the West Macs though we diverted off the road to Roma Gorge on the recommendation of the staff at Glen Helen.
To get to the Roma Gorge you drive for 8.5 km along a creek bed, definitely 4×4 only territory this one ! It was reminiscent of many of the special stages we’d competed on the Outback Challenge albeit at a much slower pace. The track twisted and turned it’s way up the creek bed, most of it rocky with the occasional sandy stretch, it probably took about 30 minutes steady driving to get to the end of the track.
The Roma Gorge in itself is nice enough (we really are gorged out now) but the outstanding feature was the quantity of Aboriginal petroglyphs that seemed to cover every available large expanse of flat rock. It seemed everywhere you looked there were different designs. One striking feature was that some of the designs seemed to have a cup and ring design, almost identical to designs found in the UK.

Our second stop, again a recommendation, was at a lookout point as we left the West Macs. This lookout gave a superb view of our next stopping point about 20km away, Gosse Bluff. From a distance the bluff looks like a simple but impressive mountain that seems to stand alone in the middle of a plain.
Gosse Bluff is actually believed to be a meteor crater, a circle of mountains surrounding a flat inner plain. The Aboriginal story for the crater also points to it being a result of an impact of an object from space albeit that the meteorite in their story is a baby in a crib that fell from the Milky Way and landed upside down when it’s mother was distracted while dancing. The two parents now search for the star baby, taking the form of two prominent stars.

Not long after leaving Gosse Bluff we turned onto the 150km unsurfaced road to Kings Canyon where we planned to stay the night. As the road was in pretty good condition we made good time and arrived at Kings Canyon early enough in the afternoon to do one of the gorge walks along Kings Creek.
I’m not sure if we’re just jaded but it was a bit of a disappointment really. If it had been the first such gorge we’d seen we’d have probably been a bit more enthusiastic with the steep red sides with white and yellow ochre patches contrasting against a deep blue sky and lush green foliage. This is the last gorge we plan on visiting for a while on this trip, probably just as well 🙂
Tomorrow we’ll head to Uluru where we’ll be staying for two nights, partly because we could do with a “rest day” before we start our journey to Mount Dare. We should have internet access at Uluru so I’ll be able to post this and the other posts and pictures that are waiting to be uploaded. This next couple of weeks are likely to be the worst for telephone and internet access so posting will be sporadic. We made sure the satellite phone and it’s spare battery are fully charged today, just in case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4P7z_9mlJg&sns=em