Day 11, May 5th, Ormiston Pound Walk

Woke up before 6:00 AM for some morning exercise, then at 6:30 set off on the famous 7.5km long Ormiston Pound Walk, said to be the most beautiful short hike in the West MacDonnell National Park. Only one thing made us uneasy: The homepage stated that you currently had to swim 15m through very cold water in the river to complete the circuit. Printed notes on the trail also stated the same. Now, Lindelani can't swim, and neither can my camera! However, at the kiosk yesterday they had told us that by now it was possible to walk through the hip-deep water. But the heavily overweight people at the kiosk did not look like they had ever done the walk themselves, nor could they show us on the map where the water was.

Well then, we cheerfully set off before sunrise, climbing the hill through green hills, with a great view of the river valley below us, which we then descended into. From here we could see the entire massive gorge, a huge red crack that opened up in the mountains.

Before the gorge, the highlight of the day: A bright green swarm of perhaps 50 parakeets flew into the gorge. Unfortunately too far away and too quick to photograph.

At the entrance to the gorge, we had already walked 5km and spent 2 hours on the trail and would have reluctantly had to walk all the way back. The path was only just beginning to get difficult, as we now had to walk through rubble and over large stones in the riverbed, which made us quite slow.

A while later we found ourselves at the first water crossing. To our left was just a high rock wall; we had to go through the river to continue on the other side.

It looked deep, but doable.

First, I went over. Without equipment. Right at the deep spots it was slippery. You could step on large stones, but there was also the risk of slipping down. The water was almost chest high, but even if one had slipped into the deeper water, one could still stand.

Back to the other bank. Carrying hand, camera, and shoes over. I nearly slipped and dropped the camera in the water, but it worked out okay this time. However, I lost the lens cap here, the second one in Australia (the first was 1.5 years ago in Tasmania).

Then Lindelani slowly made her way over, and I was ready to help her if necessary. But everything went well.

Now we continued along the narrowing stream bed. We didn't know if we had another river crossing ahead, possibly deeper. We didn't want to turn back and walk 3 hours back, as it was only another 30 minutes to the camp.

However, we had seen another spot from the viewpoint yesterday where we probably had to go through the river.

So we were very relieved when we saw the steps up to the Ghost Gum Loop Walk, which we had abandoned last night. From there it was only an hour to the camp, and that was definitely possible.

Although climbing through the riverbed kept getting harder, the second river crossing was easier than the first. And after 3.5 hours, we were happily back at camp. And proud to have completed this tour today.

Had a nice breakfast.

By the way, the new battery had held up excellently overnight and was still in the green range.

We then drove back along the West MacDonnell mountains and visited another gorge, Serpentine Gorge, another good 3km of walking. At least we were able to see and photograph zebra finches again here. We arrived at our camp for the day, the Ellery Creek Campground, at 1:00 PM. A cozy afternoon, and at 3:00 PM we did the local Dolomite Walk of 3km, which brought us to a total of about 14km for the day.