The Alice and MacDonnell Ranges

We head further south to Alice Springs. The main reason for our visit to the “Capital of Outback Australia” is to stock up on vegetables, fruit, meat, muesli etc. But we cease the opportunity to visit the Alice Springs School of the Air (ASSOA), the biggest classroom in the world covering an area of more than 1 1/2 million square kilometres, roughly twice the size of Germany. Some classmates live 2,000 km apart. They meet each other four times per year in The Alice, but the bulk of education is delivered via satellite dishes and the internet. ASSOA is a public school, so most costs are covered through tax-funding. Though running costs are about three times higher than for a common public school, federal funding is basically the same. Hence the school relies on third-party financial contributions; the whole visitor centre is part of this. We book a guided tour and buy some books for Niklas and Jonas. For them this visit is particularly interesting as they haven’t seen their very own classroom for ten weeks now and are enjoying home-schooling by Claudia and me instead.

East and west of The Alice are the MacDonnell Ranges, some folds in the earth crust that extend over a distance of a few hundred kilometres from west to east. Apparently these hills were once higher than today’s Himalaya. But that was a long time ago, long before the Indian subcontinent even started moving north, in the process forming Mount Everest and the like.

Once again we realise how ancient the Australian continent is, its geology, flora, fauna. Oldest river in the world (Finke); prehistoric animals that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, basically unaltered till today (saltwater crocodiles); the oldest still living culture in the world, the Aborigines who have lived here for approximately 20,000 to 40,000 years. It blows your mind!

A particular gem in the West MacDonnell Ranges is Ormiston Gorge.

We stay for two nights and explore the area on a few hikes. One of them leads up the slopes of the hills, down into the pound — a huge rocky amphitheatre — on the opposite side, from there over boulders through the gorge back to our campsite.

Ormiston Pound — worth a panorama photo

There is only little water in the gorge, but dark algae marks high on the red cliffs are clear indicators that after heavy rain this can be a torrent. Only the pool at the entrance to the gorge holds permanent water. Huge ghost gums line the dry river bed.

We later learn that the Ormiston Pound Hike was recently named Australia’s number one hike. If you think that we had to share the track with heaps of other hiking enthusiast, you obviously haven’t been to Down Under yet: On our 4 1/2 hour trip we meet two more people …

[Alice Springs, 28.-29. August]
[Ormiston Gorge, West Macdonnell Ranges NP, 29.-31. August]