Trephina Gorge, Northern Territory
A day exploring the East MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia: a visit to the Arltunga goldfields, and the N'Dhala Gorge.
And we find that camels stink.
Camels stink. And they don't get out of the road.
Driving to the N'Dhala Gorge this afternoon at 100 kilometers an hour, we came upon a most peculiar sight... two camels on the side of the road. They're big! But not as big--or as in the way--as the little nuclear camel family that was standing square in the middle of the road.
There was big dad, big mum, and a little one. (What's a little camel called anyway?) Chris thought he'd try his cattle maneuver, which is to say drive straight at them and they'll move. Heh. Doesn't work with camels! So we drove on the road shoulder, got out the camera, and took some pictures. Too bad we can't capture their smell on film, though. They stink! Perhaps it was their prescient revenge for Chris downing a camel fillet at the Red Ochre Grill on Sunday night. Australia now has the only wild population of dromedary camels on Earth, too.
Earlier in the day, we had wandered through the old goldfields of Arltunga. It was OK, but nothing all that special--seems like they were trying to make a big tourist event, complete with visitor center and slide show, around a dozen crumbled-but-restored-now buildings and a few mineshafts, and a couple of cemeteries. If it weren't for the fact it was Central Australia's first settlement, it wouldn't be any more interesting than the hundreds of other Australian mining ventures that failed in the late 19th century. Still, it was neat to go into one of the mines. The gold was very close to the surface in quartz veins, 3 to 4 meters deep, and the miners hand tunneled shafts to follow it. The National Parks people have put in two steel ladders into two shafts, so you can go down, crawl around for 20 meters or so, then come up. That was neat, though Chris lost his sunglasses in the mine and had to go back and get them.
After the gold fields (and the camels), we headed to N'Dhala Gorge, which features pecked and gouged rock Aboriginal rock art. The rock art was disappointing: the guide books and Park brochures said '5000 works of arts, incredibly art rich!', but on the 1 kilometer walk into the gorge all that's really visible is about a dozen, if that. The gorge itself was spectacular though, lined with cypress and ghost gums, with towering orange cliffs above.
We came back to our camp and read in the afternoon. I'm finally going through all the magazines that I seem to buy but never read, and saving all the good tidbits for later. It's tedious, but I want to do it.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
Two today! Chris spotted a fat tailed dunnart, and those five camels we saw on the road.
The dunnart was in the bottom of a collapsed mine shaft, maybe 2 meters below ground level. Chris spotted him when he moved. At first we thought he was a mouse, but then we saw his fat flat tail, a light bulb went on, and I realized it was a marsupial, not a rodent.
The camels, well, you've heard the story already.