The men at Roma Gorge (behind these walls is secret Aboriginal Men's Business) Petroglyphs at Roma Gorge

The Ochre Pits

Steve cooking at Ormiston Gorge

Ormiston Gorge water hole

Ghost gum at Ormiston Gorge

Ormiston Gorge lookout

29th, 30th June, 1st, 2nd , 3rd July 2009
After checking out some of the campsites around the West MacDonnell Ranges, we decided on setting up at Ormiston Gorge. It’s about in the middle of all the known gorges and attractions, so we thought it would be a good place to set up camp and do day trips from here. The grounds are beautiful. We have flushing toilets and solar showers. By the end of the day, we found that the campers are really packed in as it is first in first serve. That was OK, we had great neighbours (Barrie and Sheila – a couple from Gladstone) and lots of families. Also, the birdlife (feathered variety) is abundant. Saw lots of species that we hadn’t seen before.

The other sites we looked at were:
Glen Helen – this is a resort style that had a restaurant, bar and small shop which were beautiful attached to it, but the campsite was stuck right out in the open. It didn’t have the gorge “feel” we were looking for.
Redbank Gorge – a beautiful gorge campground that allowed for campfires (unusually). Had a pit toilet, no showers. The surrounds were really nice but it seemed to be the place that the real serious hikers were camping at – with a 4 year old, we don’t fit that category (probably wouldn’t without a 4 year old either!)

We went for a hike today along the Ormiston Gorge and then down to the river bed (which is now dry except for a few waterholes) and hiked back to camp. It was about 4km’s which is a good go for Dan. Once again the views and escarpments were beautiful. The riverbed was littered with little waterholes along the way, albeit stagnant and teeming with dead fish. At least the pelicans get a good free feed.

Monday there was a free Ranger talk about identifying signs of life in the gorge, which was really good. It was held by Ranger Mandy, who did the whole talk with a baby python on her head. Cam is really taking a huge interest in these talks, and now when we do hikes he is starting to identify different animal tracks and poo. Yay, he’s learning! Wednesday night there was another slideshow talk by Ranger Leanne. Again, Cam listened intently to all the talks on animals and plantlife.

We’ve cooked a couple of roast dinners on the Cobb and Steve is starting to perfect the heating. He did a great pork roast with apple sauce that we made from some old apples we had. We all gobbled it down immediately as our neighbours were drooling.

The purchase of a cryovac machine (we bought it in Alice Springs) has also been a blessing. We’ve found that since leaving Broken Hill, there haven’t been many butchers that provide the service so we bought a little one for ourselves. We’ve found that no matter how much you plan your meals, there was always wasted meat as we opted for the simpler noodle meals more often than thought. At least now, we don’t have the waste.

Another highlight on the camp was visiting Roma Gorge. It isn’t written about in any of our tour books, and we were told about it by the camp manager at Ormiston. We had to drive about 8 km’s along this sandy/rocky riverbed (yes – it was dry) to get to this little path. About 300 metres along the path are these amazing Aboriginal petroglyphs all along the rock faces. This is the first time I was hit with how special this traveling opportunity is for us. It was absolutely beautiful. We stopped at this little water hole which had hundreds of tiny finches feeding in it.

The Ochre Pits and Serpentine Gorge are also well worth a visit. We didn’t go to Standley Chasm as we weren’t going to pay money to see a gorge when we’d seen so much beauty for free. There will be more gorges when we hit Kakadu and Katherine (and we’ll be able to swim in those) so we decided to stop before we were gorged out!

We also met at camp two brothers Mark and David who had this amazing artwork on the pipe carrier on top of their car. Mark painted pictures of the places they were visiting – it really looked amazing. We now have a “Mark Original” on the cap of our pipe also – a demonic looking smiley face!