Larapinta Trek - Day 4

Section 8 - Serpentine Gorge to Counts Point and Serpentine Chalet

This hike is a long climb that leads to the crest of the Heavitree Range, which is then followed, for several hours, with sweeping views of the surrounding plains and ridges.

Lovely desert flower...

The bottom of the sea....on a mountain top!   These rocks are ripples from an old sea bed.

An inland sea did exist during Australia's geological history.    In this extensive, shallow sea, a lot of material was deposited and sequentially compressed into very think layers of sedimentary rock.   These were then raised into mountain ranges and eroded away agin to form more rock in the area of the inland sea.   This process happened several times over.   The olders rocks are in the northern MacDonnell Ranges, with formations becoming younger to the south.   Some of these rocks are month the oldest on Earth.

Counts Point

Counts Point provides incrediable views, and, as usual, these pictures do not do it justice.  This has a magnificient view of the mountains at the western end of the West MacDonnell Ranges.  This provides a fantastic view to the north-west looking along a straight valley.  At the end of the valley is Mt Sonder, to its right, in the distance, is the highest peak in Australian's Northern Territory, Mt Zeil, and the high wall of rock on the right is Mt Giles.

Green beans...

Aboriginal Tjukurpa

The Birth of Emu

Of the three sisters who came down from the stars of Orion's Belt, two returned and one was obliged to stay on earth and play the role of Tya (the earth spirit).   Because the emu is a lfightless bird, it symbolizes the third sister's being a prisoner on earth.   But the emu is a dowdy, ill mannered and ill-tempered creatur, no t the best choice for the incarnation of the ultimate female.

The first thing Enu created was the Tnatanja Pole, it was covered in down and reached up to the stars.   But, she left it in the care of Termite Women, whereupon it was given to breaking and snapping where she had eaten into it.   It was this constant falling and erection that ultimately shaped the Australian landscape.

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.

Larapinta Trek - Day 2 - Stanley Chasm

Beautiful Eucalyptus Tree

Stanley's Chasm was utterly amazing!!

What views!

We were about to find out why there was a warning sign that said:  "Experienced hiker's only"!

Check out this massive crack through the rock...

Time for dinner!  We drink wine, they cook the food!

Ummm!   Fish cooked in a pit with holendaise sauce!   Not bad for roughing it, ah?

Time to sit around the fire and drink wine...now, that's a vacation!

Tjukurpa - Aboriginal Dreamtime

Frill-necked Lizard

Walek, the frill-necked lizard, led the liard people of Nelgi Island (fify kilometres north of Cape York).   They had yet to discover fire and their cooking procedures, using sun heated stones, were subsequently long and laborious.   But Walek had a sister living in the far off islands of Papua New Guinea from where smoke was often seen to rise.   It was Walek who undertook the long and dangerous journey to his sister's village.  At first, she refused him and then gave him a cold coal, but he persisted and finally returned to a hero's welcome with the gift of file.

Because lizards are connected with thieves (stealing fire) and shape shifting, we might relate this to the little boy who came from nowhere and would never tell anyone about himself.  He was very lovable and was adopted by the tribe, but, soon all manner of things, except the Tjurunga and other sacred objects, began to go missing.   He was eventually caught and was about to have a thrashing administered when a falling spear injured him and he died.   His body was covered with bark but the next day it had disappeared.   In its place, there was only a lizard.