Larapinta Trail, Central Australia

The Larapinta Trail takes the walker deep into the astonishingly beautiful red-heart of Australia.

Following the spine of the Tjoritja / West MacDonnell Ranges, the Larapinta Trail traverses the land of the Arrernte people. Their songlines tell of ancestral beings who travelled this country, bringing its flora, fauna, waterholes and landforms into life. The trail extends for 225 kilometres, from Mt Sonder to the desert town of Alice Springs. It weaves its way through spectacular gorges, climbs over rugged peaks, drops into green oases and follows the meanderings of ancient rivers. 

Prelude

In the late winter of 2007, we walked away from our city-bound desks and less than 24 hours later set up camp at Redbank Gorge, the starting point of our 16-day journey on the Larapinta Trail. 

Luminous ghost gums and towering rock walls glow orange in the setting sun, like an Albert Namatjira painting on a monumental scale. The night sky is infinite and mystical. Constellations, satellites, shooting stars; the Milky Way weaving a path from west to east, a sparkling universe millions of light-years away. 

Two other people are setting out on the Larapinta Trail from here, another Anna and her husband Adam, monk-like with their shaved heads and enigmatic smiles. In the darkness, we talk about our lives and the places we’ve walked and wandered.

Episode 1: Redbank Gorge, Mt Sonder, Redbank Gorge

Yellow-collared, ringneck parrots see us off on our early morning climb to Mt Sonder, a sacred mountain and at 1,380 metres the highest point of the Larapinta Trail. Pink mountain hakeas and yellow wattles daub the landscape with bright colour. At the periphery of our vision, we catch sight of a small, quick, dark marsupial. A euro perhaps, or a rock wallaby. 

The sun is warm and the breeze cool. After navigating the steep, rocky trail we sit on the summit for a couple of hours, taking in the vastness of the country and the grandeur of its beauty. Creation stories tell of the spirit in the land and that night we hear a distant roar we imagine being waves breaking on the shore of the inland sea that once covered this area. 

Episode 2: Redbank Gorge to Hill Top

We walk all morning through unexpectedly gentle woodlands. The delicate seed heads of spinifex waver in the breeze and double-barred finches flit about. A relaxed lunch at Rocky Bar Gap then on through an orange-walled gorge and out into sparse desert country.

The climb to Hill Top is tough; the afternoon sun bearing down on us and our packs heavy with the water we need to camp up high, away from tanks and water holes. The gift of the afternoon is a splendid wren, its electric blue flight remarkable in the austere landscape. 

From Hill Top, we take in the striking 360-degree panorama of the West MacDonnells. The sun setting behind Mt Sonder, Mt Giles glowing in the east, the earth’s shadow a delicate blue and the sky shell-pink above it. 

Episode 3: Hill Top to Ormiston Gorge via the Finke River

We wake to the faintest light in the eastern sky. Outside our tent, the moon is still high and bright.

Diamond doves and ringneck parrots in the woodlands, a diamond bug on a bloodwood tree, majestic old river red gums lining the Davenport and Finke rivers. The Finke River (or Larapinta to the Arrernte) is the most ancient of the world’s rivers. It has taken the same broad course for at least 100 million years and parts date back more than 300 million years, before the time of the dinosaurs.

The track weaves through woodland and spinifex before climbing the ridge across broken, barren country where nothing grows except, inconceivably, the most delicate of wildflowers. Pale mauve flowers with iridescent deep pink tips that sparkle in the sun; tiny pink and white everlasting daisies; red, yellow and blue flowers that splash colour onto the earth. Mt Sonder to the west is a constant glowing presence in the landscape.

We arrive at Ormiston Gorge in time to catch the kiosk and enjoy a cold ginger beer. A hot shower (our only shower for 16 days), the gentle babble of families and grey nomads, rock wallabies at the waterhole at sunset; these are the things that soothe us this fine desert evening.

Episode 4: Ormiston Gorge – a semi-rest day 

Sitting in the sun with an early morning cup of coffee, we start up a conversation with a camper who turns out to be a forester from Tasmania. He tells us that his craft, his passion, is the felling of trees in old-growth native forests. He becomes silent when we reveal we work for an organisation that is campaigning to stop the logging of these forests. We are stumbling towards an acceptance of each other’s views when his young daughter innocently skips up and shifts the conversation onto safer ground. 

The nine-kilometre loop track around Ormiston Pound reveals a landscape of conical hills worn out of mountains over millions of years, desert roses in bloom, wallaby tracks in the sun-cracked mud, fire-engine red dragonflies and an outburst of green and yellow budgerigars. There’s a richness of geological treasure lying in the dry river bed. The movement of waves on the inland sea is etched into rocks and held there as art. 

At night a line of fire burns along the edge of the ridge and transforms the dark landscape into a Tim Storrier painting.

Episode 5: Ormiston Gorge to Mt Giles Lookout

The first light of the sun catches smoke rising from Mount Ormiston. The dark secrets of hidden gorges glow orange as the fire burns.

Zebra finches in the river red gums; a spinifex pigeon moving across the sand; the stark white of ghost gums against the red earth. We walk across lava-black ground and skirt around Heavitree Range before the long, slow, hot walk up to Mt Giles lookout. Again we carry water so that we can camp up high, above the desert plain. We finish the day’s walk early and spend the afternoon reading and gazing out on the encircling mountains. Mt Ziel, Sonder and Ormiston to the west, Mt Giles close on our northern side and, to the east, Brinkley Bluff, still a few days’ walk away. 

The earth’s shadow like silk this evening and a rim of fire still blazing in the distance. 

Episode 6: Mt Giles Lookout to Serpentine Chalet Dam

We stop to brew a coffee at Waterfall Gorge and sit quietly as flocks of firetails & zebra finches fly in to drink. Hundreds of small bright-beaked birds perch on rock ledges and tree branches. Flashes of red cross-hatch the dark rock wall behind the waterhole. 

Inarlanga Gorge is the boundary between two nations and home to an oasis of cycads and other relict plants from a time when this desert was a rainforest. We sit among great white boulders and ghost gums in the shade of the deep, cool gorge. 

The days are warming and the nights becoming milder. There are no other walkers at Serpentine Chalet Dam when we arrive so we strip and wash some of the accumulated dirt and sweat from our bodies. 

In the depths of the night, a dingo howls close to our campsite.

Episode 7: Serpentine Chalet Dam to Serpentine Gorge

Serpentine chalet is now a ruin. The dam is without water but still bears the names of the two proud Italian carpenters who built its formwork. 

We tackle the toughest part of today’s walk in the cool of early morning. According to a ranger we meet en route, the temperature is edging up towards the thirties. A rock wallaby shelters from the sun, high up in a crevice of the gorge.  

A day of nests; a conical wasp’s nest in a shrub, a courting crow’s nest, and a peregrine falcon’s nest on the steep quartzite-red wall of Serpentine Gorge. As the sun sets, we settle into our snug, nest-like abode.

Episode 8: Serpentine Gorge to Ellery Creek Big Hole

We are the most clamorous beings in the landscape; when we stop moving, a great silence descends. 

Blocks of stone lie like the ruins of a medieval city. The spinifex dotted on the pink earth creates a garden of soft green plants offset by rock walls.

It’s warm again and lizards & dragons sun themselves on the rocks. We walk into Ellery Creek early enough to spend most of the afternoon by Big Hole, watching the Sunday trippers out from Alice Springs and listening to snatches of conversation in a multitude of languages.

A kind car-camper gifts us two ice-cold oranges. We eat them slowly, relishing them as one might a fine meal.

Pink Major Mitchell cockatoos in a stand of red gums, the late afternoon sun still warm. Black cockatoos at sunset and the butcher bird’s sweet song. 

We walk for 15 kilometres or so a day, each step taking us further away from our workaday mindset. When we’re not walking, we’re as slow as the earth itself.

Episode 9: Ellery Creek to Ghost Gum Flat

A thin veil of clouds across the sky, pink with the first rays of the sun. Out from Ellery Creek, we come upon slabs of conglomerate rock formed by glaciers in the last ice age and lying here still, millennia after the last snowmelt.

Disquieted by half-remembered dreams, a desolation takes hold. Wild wind storms make the going across a vast plain of fire-blackened mallee an effort of will. 

After replenishing our water at Rocky Gully, we decide to press on. The day calms, our mood lightens and the walking becomes effortless. When we arrive at Ghost Gum Flat, we discover to our delight a wooden platform for the repose of walkers. We think of it as a desert raft and sleep out on it, under the stars. 

Episode 10: Ghost Gum Flat to Fringe Lily Creek via Hugh Gorge

A relaxing early morning walk to Hugh Gorge. A wedge tail eagle flys through the gorge, low and close. A magnificent sight; its wings outstretched and every feather detailed. 

Hugh Gorge, dramatic and beautiful with its red bluffs and relict cycad & fig gardens. Firetails and tattooed butterflies lead us to a waterhole. There are masses of holly grevillea in flower and wattles with large bright-yellow baubles. Fragrant mountain lemongrass grows alongside the track and purple lilies flower in the creek bed. In the warmth of the afternoon, the desert is as fragrant as a benediction.

Episode 11: Fringe Lily Creek to Stuart Pass

A euro moving lightly through the spinifex in the early morning light. Tough walking today through spectacularly rugged country. Up across the Razor Back, down to Windy Saddle and then bouldering our way through ochre-red Spencer Gorge. 

We stop at Birthday Waterhole for lunch and watch peregrine falcons riding the thermals above. Then we walk on to place ourselves within easier reach of Brinkley Bluff, tomorrow’s steep three-kilometre climb.

We’ve now walked 150 kilometres, with half that again ahead. We’re carrying quieter minds, leaner bodies and rock-grazed limbs. 

At sunset, Brinkley Bluff glows molten orange as we gaze at it from our camp in a sandy creek bed. 

Episode 12: Stuart Pass to Standley Chasm

We’re up before first light for the ascent of Brinkley Bluff. Just before the summit, light breaks through the clouds and the high country, still green from recent rains, looks more brooding southern landscape than central Australian desert. 

From the summit of Brinkley Bluff, we can see back to Mt Sonder and range upon range of breathtakingly beautiful country. The magenta-tinged, weather-rounded ranges roll-on, into the distance. Etched into the landscape below are the meanderings of dry creeks that flow into the Finke River after rain. A great peace descends and we feel blessed to find ourselves here together, on the edge of the high bluff.

Eventually, we walk on, following the ridgeline of the Chewings Range before dropping down a cycad studded gorge to Stanley Chasm. 

A new moon in the pale sky tonight; a rock wallaby metres from our tent; the world quiet and calm.

Episode 13: Stanley Chasm to Jay Creek

A beautiful walk this morning through a green valley. Cycad gorges and a profusion of wildflowers and flowering shrubs, including mountain hakeas in full bloom. There’s water in the pools, attracting great flocks of zebra finches and diamond doves. Three shimmering rainbow bee-eaters arrange themselves in perfect symmetry, ikebana style, on the branch of a dead tree. 

The steep rocks we clamber down are as polished as the marble columns in a cathedral, worn smooth not by the touch of devout hands but by thousands of years of water flowing down them after big rains.

We take the scenic high route. It’s a tough steep climb, the last demanding climb of the walk, but worth it for the awe-inspiring views out across the rugged ranges and desert plains to the far horizon. At Jay Creek, with bodies weary from the last few strenuous days, we sleep the sleep of angels.

Episode 14: Jay Creek to Arenge Bluff

Cool and windy today, despite the bright blue sky. For a time the ground we walk on bears the scars of degradation from the cattle that once grazed here. Truncated remnants of dead trees stand totem pole-like in the landscape.

We meet a German traveller, walking westward. He’s living off muesli bars, has no hat or sun protection and is striving to cover in six days a distance that normally takes nine. We hope his youthful stamina and spirit of adventure will see him safely to his destination. 

A few kilometres short of Simpson’s Gap we set up camp in the shadow of Arenge Bluff, keen for one more night of remote camping before the inevitable inching back towards civilisation.

Episode 15: Arenge Bluff to Wallaby Gap

A pleasant morning’s walk through undulating woodland, shadowed for part of the way by a mob of euros. 

Simpson’s Gap is a delight. We expect hordes of tourists but find tranquillity. Red-breasted robins in the trees, impressive towering red rock walls, a waterhole with leaves floating delicately on the surface and a sandy creek bed that’s like a Japanese garden. Rocks and trees aesthetically placed, the fine sand needing only a monk to rake it into a prayer. 

We have had no news of the world for 16 days and have lost the hunger for it. Every few days we meet other walkers and share information on what is of vital interest to us; where to find water, the state of the track and the location of the best campsites. 

We spend the warm afternoon walking along a ridge parallel to the caterpillar dreaming path, taking all the time we want to arrive at Wallaby Gap.

Episode 16: Wallaby Gap to Alice Springs Telegraph Station

Before we leave our last campsite on the Larapinta Trail, we walk down to the gap. Dingoes have dug deep into the dry waterhole overnight and found water near a rock crevice, a metre or so below the surface. 

We climb Euro Ridge and walk along its spine. Wedgetail eagles, our guardians for much of the journey, glide majestically along the ridge just below us. We lie on the ground and watch as they rise above the ridge before turning and disappearing westwards. Coming off the ridge we slow to a stroll, not wanting the walk to end too abruptly. 

Eventually, we cross the Ghan railway line and pick up the old telegraph line, following it to the edge of Alice Springs. We sign the logbook at the trailhead and lie in the sun for an hour or so, watching the play of galahs, spinifex pigeons and butcher birds before making our way into town.

Endnote

The night before we flew back to Melbourne we enjoyed a celebratory supper with Anna and Adam. We toasted a wonderful walk and shared stories about the trail until the proprietor turned out the lights and asked us to leave the bar. 

The Larapinta Trail is officially divided into 12 sections. The young German walker we met referred to these as ‘episodes’. It’s a word beautifully stumbled upon, carrying as it does a sense of each part of the walk being connected to, rather than cut off from, a larger story. Our sixteen episodes of the Larapinta Trail were like the verses of an ancient prayer, a polyphonic symphony, a walking meditation.

See our 5 things you need to know about the Larapinta Trail, and if you’re interested in other walks in Australia’s Northern Territory, see our stories on the Jatbula Trail and Nitmiluk National Park.