Walking the outback on Larapinta Trail

By NICK SQUIRES


Pussy cat," said Dr Charlie Carter, "is considered a great delicacy by the Aborigines. Once they've caught one they just chuck it in the fire and cook it whole. They believe it has mild medicinal properties - a bit like chicken soup."

It was early morning, the sun was high in a cloudless sky, and we were hiking through the remote and little-known MacDonnell Ranges in central Australia. Since being introduced by Europeans 200 years ago, cats - called pussy cats by the Aborigines to distinguish them from the native cat or quoll - have thrived, killing millions of birds and small mammals. For many conservationists they are public enemy No 1.

A trained biologist, Carter is full of such surprising nuggets. With his salt-and-pepper beard, battered felt hat and a garnet stud in his left ear, he is the epitome of the Outback character. His knowledge is eclectic to say the least.

He knows how to catch a native rock rat, for instance (bait the trap with rolled oats and peanut butter - they find it irresistible). Or where to find a tasty witchetty grub (look for the tell-tale piles of sawdust the worms leave as they burrow into the lower limbs of a witchetty bush).

All of which is divulged as he leads me and five other weary hikers along the 220km Larapinta Trail through the West MacDonnells, which start from just outside Alice Springs and run in broken, parallel lines just beneath the Tropic of Capricorn. First conceived in the 1980s, the trail's 12 sections have been laid out with the help of local Aborigines and prisoners from Alice Springs jail.

The trail can be hiked in its entirety, taking about 18 days. It is well marked and there are water tanks no more than a day's walk apart.

Encompassing some of the most spectacular scenery in Australia's arid interior, it is likely to become one of the world's classic long-distance hiking trails.

Abundant rains over the past two years mean this part of Australia is bursting with life. The normally dun-coloured mountains are swathed in green, and wildlife is thriving.

"This is the best it's looked for 80 years," Carter told us. "Nobody alive has seen it looking this lush before."

For much of our four-day exploration of the Larapinta we camped by the meandering Finke River, which is generally bone dry. Now, though, it has come alive and we laid our swags on a sandy beach beside a deep, reed-fringed waterhole, plunging into it every evening after a hard day's walk in temperatures of up to 30C.

As I swam there contentedly one evening, a flock of green and gold collared parakeets exploded from a nearby ghost gum tree, and the dark silhouette of a wedge-tailed eagle soared overhead.

Black-footed rock wallabies, with endearingly striped facial markings, hopped around boulders the colour of blood, and tiny fairy wrens, painted a stunning combination of turquoise and midnight blue, flitted between the mulga trees.

"People have an image of central Australia as being like the Sahara - completely flat, hot and dusty, with Ayers Rock poking up in the middle," Carter said. "They think it's dry, dead and boring. They're astonished to see it has trees and shrubs and mountains."

The Larapinta Trail starts 4km north of Alice Springs, beside the waterhole which gave the town its name. In 1872 pioneers built a telegraph station here, a vital link in the overland telegraph which was strung all the way from Adelaide on the south coast to Darwin in the north, providing Australia with its first direct communications with London.

Five men died while building the line, following a route blazed for the first time just 10 years before by European explorers.

From the telegraph station - now a collection of well-restored stone buildings, complete with loopholes for repelling attacks by local Aborigines - the trail swings north then quickly west, heading into the folded hills of the West Macs.

The landscape has changed little since Aborigines first settled here around 30,000 years ago. In summer the temperature can reach 45C, and during the midday heat only the buzz of flies breaks the silence.

The Victorian explorer Charles Sturt complained that it was so hot the ink in his pen dried before he could put it to paper.

John McDouall Stuart, the first European to make it to what is now Alice Springs, wrote: "I am now reduced to a perfect skeleton, a mere shadow. I can chew nothing, and all that I have been living on is a little beef tea, and a little boiled flour".

But we were hiking in September, and while it was certainly warm, there was a pleasant breeze blowing across the stony ridges we tramped along, and the nights were deliciously cool.

Carter is one of the few tourist operators to offer guided walks along the Larapinta, and the emphasis is on stopping and learning about the landscape, rather than notching up the kilometres.

He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the local plants and animals. The brightly coloured beans of the batwing coral tree, he tells us, were used by Aborigines to make necklaces. What looks like a ragged pair of women's tights caught in a bush turns out to be the remains of a caterpillar nest.

Aborigines can tell the difference between the European house mouse - which, like the cat, was introduced to Australia - and the almost identical sandy inland mouse simply by sniffing them.

Carter hacks open a cricket-ball-sized bush coconut - a gall which grows around a wasp's nest - and offers us the moist, faintly sweet flesh inside.

We come across droppings left by a dingo and Carter gives them a robust poke with a stick. "Looks like he's been eating mice."

He even knows the names of plants and animals in the local Aboriginal language, Arrernte.

At the end of our second day we reached Simpson's Gap, a deep cleft in the West MacDonnells with an ice-cold, permanent waterhole frequented by rock wallabies and birds.

An Australian kestrel patrolled the ochre-red cliffs above, and parakeets squabbled in the magnificent Red River Gums which lined the sandy creek. The MacDonnell ranges are studded with gorges like this, offering a welcome respite from the heat.

That night, back at the campsite beside the Finke, we drank plenty of red wine and ate a delicious kangaroo curry. The Milky Way arched overhead, the Southern Cross sat just above the horizon and we could even see Mars.

As I burrowed into my swag - a mattress, sleeping bag and canvas groundsheet all rolled into one - a dingo howled in the distance.

Day three took us up Ormiston Creek and into Ormiston Pound, a vast natural fortress guarded by sheer walls of quartzite rock. From the outside it looked like a Crusader castle; from within it felt like a hidden world.

A meandering creek, mostly dried up, led through a cleft in the walls of the Pound and down through Ormiston Gorge. Twisted ghost gums so white they look almost luminescent grew from impossibly narrow cracks in the crumbling cliffs on either side.

There were dingo pawprints in the sand, and tracks left by perentie lizards, which can reach a metre in length.

Dozens of species of wild flowers fringed the path, from purple and blue native peas and fuchsias to the splendidly named poached egg daisy, its vivid yellow centre fringed by white petals.

There were pink hakeas, which we squeezed between thumb and forefinger to gather the sweet, honey-like nectar hanging in globules on its flowers.

Our fourth and last day began with freshly brewed coffee and scrambled eggs around the campfire, fortifying us for the 16km, eight-hour return walk up Mt Sonder, at 1380m the fourth-highest mountain in central Australia.

This is the last part of the Larapinta Trail and proved a fitting end to the trip.

A tough climb through clumps of spiky spinifex grass and groves of shady corkwood trees took us to the summit, from where there was an extraordinary view of the surrounding desert.

To the west was the looming bulk of Mt Zeil, the highest point west of the Great Dividing Range. To the south, a long ridge of rounded hills looking like a giant caterpillar.

To the north, the shimmering expanse of the Napperby salt lakes. And to the east, the full length of the West MacDonnells, our home for the past four days.

It's a little-known part of the world, but one which deserves a lot more attention.

Getting there

Flight Centre is offering a package that includes return flights, three-day hire car and a night's accommodation at the Aurora Red Centre Resort, Alice Springs, from $1216 a person.

Airfare is valid for sales until December 31, travel valid until March 31 next year. The trek Dr Charlie Carter runs Trek Larapinta,

Ph: 0061 8 8953 2933


Email Dr Charlie Carter

What it costs

One-day walk, fully catered: A$132 ($150)

Overnight walk, fully catered: A$198 ($225)

Two-day, one-night walk, fully catered: A$297 ($340)

Advisory

For maps and additional information contact Central Australian Tourism Industry Association 00 61 8 8952 5800.

Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission 00 618 8951 8211.


Trek Larapinta