Just Deserts - the main course: Chambers Pillar

There was movement at The Pillar

For the word had passed around

That Big Red and Max and Prue had got away

Off to the wild bush places

That are still there to be found

And all the Ultis gathered for the fray

All the tried and noted Ultimateers

From regions near and far

Had mustered at The Pillar overnight

For the Four-bies love hard driving

Where the Desert Oaks abound

And the Ultis snuff the battle with delight

...

And down by Chambers Pillar

Where the remnant ramparts raise

Their worn and rounded battlements on high
Where the air is clear as crystal

And where the white stars fairly blaze

At midnight in a cold and frosty sky

And where around the campfire

The faces glowed with light

And the laughter spilled

And echoed roundabout

Our memories linger with a sigh

And far off we tell our stories of the night.

(apologies to A.B. " Banjo" Paterson, Di's favourite bush poet)

Rainbow Valley to Chambers Pillar

Graham had done a lot of homework before coming away on the big trip that he and Liz were doing across to the Kimberley and other faraway exotic destinations. Part of this was getting in touch with a friend in Alice Springs to check out a direct route from Rainbow Valley through to Chambers Pillar which showed up on some of his GPS maps. He’d been told that the route was regularly traveled and no problem. While we were at Rainbow Valley some rangers came by and we had a chat with them. Initially they ran the line past us that there was no through road, but more close questioning revealed that they used it themselves and had been on it recently so we decided to give it a shot.

It proved to be a great little drive. Here’s what it looks like on Google Earth:

Sidling through the desert

Before we set out though, I took this early morning farewell photo of our campsite:

Rainbow Valley campsite

 From a camping point of view there are two things for me that are most notable about this photo, so I’ll draw your attention to them in case you haven’t noticed. In the foreground on the left you can see what is a gas barbecue, but it’s not your standard variety with just a hot plate. In fact it has gas rings as well so you can cook outdoors using your own pots and pans. To its right and slightly behind is a steel firepit set into the ground. It is a brilliant thing, used at all the National Park campsites in the NT that we were to subsequently visit.
This was our first camping experience in the Northern Territory and we thought the infrastructure provided for campers was fantastic, and for only $3.30 per night per person.

The next photo is just a shot through the windscreen, showing the sandy dirt track that took us east towards the new Ghan Railway ...

Typical sandy desert track

... but before we got there we passed a spot with a sign that we couldn’t read from a distance. Not exactly sure where we were or where we were going, I got out and jogged across to take a look at what it said. The sign marked a native garden where cultivation and research of bush tomatoes and native raisins was being conducted. While I was finding that out Di took this photo of flowers on a poisonous potato plant with fruits she thought might be the tomatoes ... but no they are actually the bush potato: steer clear! …

Bush potato: poisonous - do not eat!

We were delighted when the track we were following did, as expected, cross the Ghan. You might notice the flag flying from Graham and Liz’s vehicle in the next photo ...

Crossing the "new" Ghan Railway

This is a precaution that off-roaders generally employ when traveling in sand dune country on the very narrow dirt roads that tend to be the norm out back. Another something new for Di and I, and part of the learning curve for our off-road explorations.

As we crossed the Ghan I paused briefly to mark the occasion ...

The "new" Ghan stretches southward

... much to Di’s consternation, who quite rightly reminded me that one should never stop over a railway line … but then I was always a naughty boy at school …

We came to a spot amongst thinly spread trees where a small flock of budgies were swooping from one tree to the next. Although we were unable to get a photo of them, Di did take this shot of what seemed to be some kind of nest, rather reminiscent of the green ant nests that abound in tropical FNQ ...

A well-hung nest, nest-ce past?

We really had no idea what it was - and Liz (who was a science teacher in a previous life) - didn’t either.  There were smaller versions scattered throughout the trees in this part of our journey, but that was by far the largest. (If there’s anyone out there who reads this and can identify that object I’d greatly appreciate a comment at the bottom of the post.)

Next is a little movie Di shot through the windscreen of us following Graham and Liz through a dry watercourse. It’s not going to feature in any short film festival, but it will give you an idea of the bumpy terrain and you should enjoy Di’s sound effects ...

Bumpier than it looks!

After more fun wending our way through interesting terrain featuring a range of low rocky hills, we found ourselves on the old Hugh River stock route and then the junction with South Road leading to Maryvale, where we paused for some morning tea and had the pleasure of hearing some familiar voices come through on the radio. Before long, our friends Max and Prue came round the corner ...

Here comes Sheriff Max with Deputy Prue riding shotgun

Their mate Neville followed them into our impromptu roadside stop. We had been hearing a bit about Nev off and on and were delighted to make his acquaintance as he proved to be our chief entertainer over the next couple of days and again later when we were reunited by chance at Watarrka National Park.

Okay, time for the customary aside. Here’s a photo of Max, Prue and our new mate “Captain Neville” ...

The Three Amigos

You’ll note the French Foreign Legion-like hat that Nevy is wearing. Now, I haven’t heard any stories about Nev having been in the FFL (you'll want the volume turned up full if you click on this link), but I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s done a lot of things including, I believe, participating in the Finke Desert Race. (Aside from this aside: if you're a real rev-head, this year's race will be held from the 7th to the 9th of June and you could probably find a live stream somewhere. Our wonderful, unparalleled anywhere in the universe and national treasure, the ABC did a live stream of last year's race.)  

Anyway, back to Nev: as you can tell by his grizzled appearance, he’s been around the traps a fair bit, which you can tell by his patched-up walking boots. When we were waiting on Friday night at Chambers Pillar for our talk from Ricky the Ranger, Nev kept us in stitches with a series of old fart jokes, which was appropriate as we were, largely, a collection of Old Farts. Here's an example:

Mabel and Beryl, a couple of residents of the Nearly Done Retirement Village, decided to have an outing to town. They got in the car and were rolling along nicely when Beryl suddenly noticed that they'd gone straight through a red light. Slightly perturbed, she thought that Mabel must have just missed that one so she didn't say anything. Shortly thereafter, the same thing happened again. Slightly more perturbed she thought to herself, "I wonder if Mabel is having a bad day"?  She still didn't say anything as she didn't want to upset her dear friend. But when it happened yet again she just couldn't help herself and burst out: "Mabel!!! Do you realise that you've just gone through three red lights????"  
Somewhat startled, Mabel replied, "Oh! Am I driving?!?"

So, here’s to you, Nevy; we look forward to our next rendezvous with your good self.

Okay, back to the main game, and time for a bit of background into why we were going to Chambers Pillar in the first place. Max was the inspiration and chief organiser for our visit to “The Pillar”. He first floated the idea almost a year ago by mentioning on the Ultimate forum that he and Prue were going to drop in at the pillar as part of a longer journey they were taking across to the northern part of West Australia. The Pillar was a fitting destination for an outback get-together as it was used as a significant "marker post" by early explorers. 

Max suggested that other folks might like to join them, and things snowballed from there. All up there were going to be about 30 people attending this instance of one of “Max’s Weekends Away”, so it seemed only fitting that he lead this last leg of our journey into the pillar. We drove on past Maryvale and through mostly flat, open terrain south towards the pillar ...

The road is long with many a winding turn (see Cher: He ain't heavy, he's my brother)

... before arriving at our last significant obstacle in the form of a mesa referred to as “the jump-up”, which involved a bit of careful steering on the way up and engaging second gear in low range on the way down the other side. On the top we were excited to catch our first glimpse of the pillar about 10 kilometres in the distance ...

First sighting of Chambers Pillar

There being no firewood collection allowed in the Chambers Pillar Historical Reserve we stopped to gather a bit alongside the road on the way in ...

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Here again was another example of the excellent work done by the Northern Territory parks people, as they’d placed signs identifying a zone before reaching the park where firewood collection was permitted.

After settling into camp Di and I decided to stretch our legs; we were eager to get a closer look at the pillar after such a long period of anticipation.

 While the pillar and the other two significant rock formations are the main focus for visitors to the park, the vegetation is also a great attraction. The Desert Oak transforms itself from a rather spindly sapling which looks something like a hairy pencil into  a powerful, stately tree  which casts quite a bit of shade ...

Icon of central Australia: the mighty Desert Oak

We were fortunate to be visiting the desert after some very good and unseasonable late summer rains, which had brought various flowering plants to life. I’ll let the following pictures speak for themselves, although you might like to click on the third and fifth image for even more detail ...

The walk around to the pillar from the bush camping area provided great views of Window Rock ...

Window Rock

... and Castle Rock ...

Castle Rock's better profile ...

... and her more decrepit profile

... before the magnificent Chambers Pillar itself comes into view, framed by some magnificent Desert Oaks ...

Chambers Pillar framed by Desert Oaks

Incidentally, you can camp right where this photo was taken. How's that for an Ultimate Campsite?

Returning to our camping area in the evening light, we detoured to a small hill to enjoy the view over our camp ...

Part of Chambers Pillar Ultimate Muster 2014

The clouds visible on the horizon presaged thunderstorm activity, and we enjoyed a lovely evening light show. Overnight and into the early part of the morning the landscape enjoyed another few millimetres of rain so we had a slow start to the day. Once it seemed like the additional blessing from on high had pretty much finished Di and I set out for an explore on the bikes ...

Di cycling beneath Chambers Pillar

... but unfortunately couldn’t go very far as both the roads we hoped would lead us somewhere very quickly petered out into nothing.

With the rain clearing the day just got better and better so after lunch we set off again on foot towards the pillar, this time with Max and Prue (Graham was having his grandpa nap and Liz was keeping him company, so they weren’t with us). Up on the viewing platform, Di took this photo of Max and me ...

Yep. This is the life ...

... and I managed to get a self-timed shot of the four of us together ...

Di, Prue, Max and Doug at Chambers Pillar

... and here is a glimpse of the main attraction, taken from the evening viewing spot (if you're on a desktop you might like to click on the image for its full effect) ...

Chambers Pillar in a sea of green

Not a bad looking thing, eh!

That night, darkness brought on a spectacular moonless star show and Nev identified planets and circling satellites for us.  All the Ultimateers mustered at the campfire for a  talk with the local rangers, Ricky and Jeremy.  Although we had arrived at Chambers Pillar before the season for the regular ranger campfire talks started, Max had been able to organise this evening especially for us when coordinating with the rangers about the numbers of campers that would be arriving in the bush camping area.  Ricky’s talk amused and informed and gave us a much better understanding of life in this ‘hard’ waterless region.  What amazing luck to be there during a bountiful period with rain to see how the desert blooms!

We planned to leave early the next morning as we had a lot to do in Alice Springs, so we bade the gathering goodnight and headed for bed. 

On a final note, thanks again Max for putting this all together. We had a great time travelling with Graham and Liz to the muster, catching up with you and Prue and meeting some other folks along the way and at Chambers Pillar. This trip will stay with us well into the future - or not, depending how soon Old Timers Disease sets in. Furthermore, your enthusiasm for this excursion led us to tack on a side trip out to the Beating Heart, aka as the Red Centre, which will feature in a future post.

until next time, all the best

from

Doug and Di

Just Deserts - Oodnadatta and Over the Rainbow

Our route for the next stage of our journey looks like this ...

Day One: on to the Painted Desert

Not long after we left Coward Springs we spotted a couple of dingos crossing the road ahead of us and shuffling off into the scrub. Di managed to get a quick photo of one before it disappeared along with its sidekick. Although not a great photo, we were still excited because these were the first two live dingos that we've seen in our travels around the country ...

All along the Oodnadatta Track there are signs of the Old Ghan Railway. Here’s a picture of one of the many bridges that span mostly dry - but in this case wet - watercourses ...

There are many ruins of various service buildings but this is the only one we saw with a vehicle parked beside it ...

The township of William Creek is situated at a T junction with the William Creek Road, which traverses west across to Coober Pedy on the Stuart Highway. Here you can get a clear idea of how far it is to your next destination ...

A great little park with mementos from times past is situated across from the pub. There was an old steam engine with these two Galahs perched on the top of its funnel ...

... an old bullock cart built to last ...

It’s not just ruins from early pioneering days that grace this little park. This plaque ...

... explains the story of these two discarded rocket sections ...

The pub at William Creek is well know for its great coffee so we sauntered across the road for a sample - which was top notch, so don’t forget to stop if you’re going past. While we were there we bought some insect nettings to go over our hats and keep the ubiquitous flies off our faces. These were sanity-savers for us Southerners for the next few days. At this point our traveling companions Graham and Liz were detouring out to Coober Pedy for a quick look around and to get some supplies for the remote area camping that lay ahead for the next four or five days. We expected to catch up with them the day after at Arckaringa Station in the Painted Desert, as we thought to stop for the night at the iconic outback outpost of Oodnadatta.

Back on the road north Di had me stop so she could take this photo of our first clear look at a real red centre sand dune ...

A little further along we crossed Edward Creek, one of the major watercourses along the Oodnadatta Track ...

... and not long before reaching Oodnadatta is the iconic Algebuchina Bridge spanning the Neales River ...

As this sign indicates ...

 ... it is the longest bridge in South Australia and is made up of nineteen  30.9 metre spans. A pretty impressive feat of engineering this far from civilisation, it took four years to complete and was officially opened in January 1892.

Anyone who knows anything about the town of Oodnadatta will have heard of the famous Pink Roadhouse (not to be confused with the famous blue raincoat) ...

We soon realised there was no good reason for stopping the night and plenty of good reasons to keep going: it was early afternoon; only a short distance through to the Painted Desert; it was baking hot outside; and there wasn’t anywhere very appealing to set up for the night. To make the most of our brief foray into Oodnadatta we dropped into the Pink Roadhouse for an ice cream before continuing our journey. 

Although we’d technically been traveling through desert for the past couple of days, up to this point it didn’t really feel like it because the large amount of recent rainfall had greened everything up so much. But now we started to see more of what we expected the desert to look like, notwithstanding patches of grass scattered here and there ...

Wide vistas ...

... and beautiful formations ...

...  led us through to the Arckaringa homestead. We arrived around mid-afternoon, where a friendly fella by the name of Bill came over to see if we wanted a hand setting up the camper ...

Our friends Graham and Liz arrived a couple of hours later after a long day in the saddle. They were very happy to settle in for the night. Later on, after a confab we decided to stay only one night rather than the two that Graham had previously allocated. Had we not made this adjustment the next day of travel would have been pretty grueling at over 600 kilometres, most of which would have been on dirt roads. This way we could have two relatively short days, take our time more and relax into the evenings.

Day Two: we arrive in the Northern Territory

The next morning we were awoken by a large flock of Corellas roosting on the station’s communication tower. Before they had all dispersed Di managed to record their presence ...

While I was doing the departure check that good travellers should always do I spotted this guy looking to hitch-hike a lift ...

We continued to be amazed at just how green the desert had become after recent rainfall. Unfortunately these two photos don’t really do justice to the beautiful softness of the colours, but they are the best we could do ...

We had about 80 kilometres on dirt before reaching tarmac once again. The first half of that was quite interesting driving, through lots of small dry creek beds and hills; the second half was an easy cruise on pretty well-maintained gravel.

Once we reached the Stuart Highway we meandered north stopping at various spots to re-inflate tires, refuel both ourselves and our vehicles and to catch up on some important correspondence (including a birthday card to our soon-to-be seven year old granddaughter) and some email at a rare mobile access point on the highway). By late afternoon we’d reached the large overnight rest area at the South Australia - Northern Territory border and decided that was a suitable place to stop for the night ...

Di used our camp oven in the fire to cook up a great little roast of saltbush lamb that we'd bought back at Beltana station. Some root veggies in  the pot along with the roast accompanied by a good bottle of red made for a very pleasant evening with Graham and Liz, who appreciated not having to cook after their very long drive the day before.

Day Three: to Rainbow Valley

The next day promised to be a great, short drive finishing at a classic outback location so we made a leisurely start.  A cruise up the Stuart Highway took us to Stuart’s Well, the last outpost before leaving the tarmac. We made a mental note of it as it looked like a good place to stop overnight on another trip up this way. For those interested in exotic species there is the diversion of a camel ride ...

.

.. on, amongst others, this fine fellow ...

While we were enjoying our lunch a  road train full of Northern Territory cattle heading south pulled in. In the photo below you can just make out the tail end of Graham and Liz’s camper and ours in profile a little further back, which gives a sense of the scale of these massive units of transport ...

Our destination for the night was Rainbow Valley, traditionally an important meeting place for Aboriginal people - perhaps because of its beauty but perhaps more critically the presence of water ...

Arriving just after midday we had plenty of time to explore this gorgeous compact park. This is what the James Range looked like shortly after we arrived ...

We took a walk past this outcrop ...

... and on to a feature known as Mushroom Rock ...

... where a small colony of Swallows had built their nests ...

The sandy ground underfoot was dotted with animal tracks, including one from some type of lizard ...

... and we saw many of these interesting rings of dirt with a little hole in the middle where, according to Liz, the resident Lion Ant is hiding ...

There were lots of low shrubs in flower, including these lovely delicate things ...

Graham, equipped with his super duper camera; and Liz, equipped with her super duper sun shade were well prepared for our little trek ...

As the evening drew in Graham and I headed out to try to capture the light on the rock. Graham made a bunch of beautiful photos; I did my best with my simple little point-and-shoot. The next photo has been resized and compressed and I hope to have a better version up on SmugMug shortly after we get home, but in the meantime this should give you an idea why it’s worth spending the better part of a day at Rainbow Valley (not a bad photo to click on for a larger image) ...

And that’s it for this post. Look for the next update in a day or two or maybe a week ...

All the best

Doug and Di