East MacDonnells – Trephina Gorge

On our last day at Ross River we visited Trephina Gorge which we walked down and climbed the rim to a high point to get a different perspective of the gorge.  Deen also took a selfie of us both with the gorge in the background.

Trephina Gorge has a 90° bend about 200 metres down the gorge. Another feature of the gorge is the wonderful red gums growing on the floor of the gorge and among the rocks.

There was some aboriginal artwork under an overhang as well.

After that we called in to see a massive ghost gum, a beautiful tree in such a harsh environment. Red gums have a similar white trunk but it is speckled with patches of grey bark whereas the ghost gum is pure white.

Then Deen drove 4 Km down a goat track to John Hayes waterhole, a really rough road with lots of rocks, sometimes it was hard to distinguish the road from the creek as both were strewn with rocks.  At times the road did go along the creek bed anyway.  The effort was worth is as it was a beautiful waterhole. There is no information on who John Hayes was.

In the photo above the rough path is in the centre bottom of the photo, this is similar to the road.

To finish our time here we decided to have dinner at the Ross River Pub which was a delicious cottage pie and veggies.  Tuesday we head back to Alice Springs on the start of our journey home.   We heard that the Oodnadatta track has been closed between William Creek and Maree so that may give us some grief if it’s still closed when we need to go on it.

Now at Kulgara set up for the night and on checking the road it is OK to William Creek, we just to hope they don’t get rain tomorrow. It’s a bit ironical that Maree received no rain for the entire month of May by June 5th they had received 9 mm on the 3rd and 1 mm on the 4th.

If you have enjoyed this blog you can subscribe by entering your email in the box below and clicking Subscribe.