Larapinta Trek - Day 3

Our day starts off at beautiful Ellery Creek

Today we are walking through the vertical-spined dolomite country of the Bitter Springs formation.   These 800 million year old rocks contain fossilised stromatolites, the cyanobacteria that were amongst the first life on this earth.   This trail is again through woodlands and spinifex.

The trail follows the southern side of the Heavitree Range crossing a series of low ridges and hills. The trail is geologically interesting as the boundaries of several different rock types are followed. These are part of the Bitter Springs Formation which is a series of limestone, mudstone, gypsm and halite that was deposited in a shallow sea around 800 million years ago. These were compressed into rock then very steeply tilted by huge compression forces that also created the MacDonnell Ranges. Subsequent erosion has removed overlying rock and exposed the tilted formation. Rock colours are beautiful, inlcuding black outcrops of dolormite, white calcrete, purple mudstone and orange-red ironstone.

It was a LONG, HOT, difficult hiking getting here - but, we made it up to the top!  Trig Point

I found this shell laying in the sand.  It looks EXACTLY like a shell I found on my brother's property in Northern Michigan, USA.

On our way for a swim at Serpentine's Gorge.   Lookin' sexy in swimsuit and hiking boots!   Haven't bathed in days...woooo hoooo!!

As you can see, my setting up tent skills are quite lacking...  :-)

We were all very impressed at the size of Sophie's bra.

The Royal Throne....

Dinner preparation!

Time to cook!  But, we just get to kick back and watch, since we are on holiday, and the guides are working.  :-)

Yum!  Time for appetizers and wine!

Aboriginal Tjukurpa

Waterhole Tjukurpa

When, in the beginning Tjukurpa, three beautiful young women came down from the stars to visit the earth, they went walkabout.   From time to time, they needed to pass water;  where they did so, they left sacred pools.   If a mortal man should come upon one of these waterholes and drink from it, the liquid would greatly increase his capacity to learn Tjukurpa knowledge.

It is this process that took men out of their primal embryonic state, in which they lived as the Inapatua:  formless and shadowy beings whilst only faint traces of what they would one day become.   The Numbakulla were two sky-brothers who, whilst looking down upon the earth, decided to come with their knives and give final shape to these plastic creatures.   They turned them into men and women and sent them off to populate Australia.