Day Trip to the West Macdonnell Mountains

Sunday morning, the tour bus picked us up at 7:40 for a full day’s trip to the sights of the Western Macdonnell mountain ranges. We would cover 186 miles roundtrip and not get back to our hotel until 6 PM. We had chosen the same company that runs the Alice Wanderer Bus (which I will talk about later). The driver Nic, short for Nicola, was a sweet Italian man in process of earning his Aussie citizenship. He was a wealth of information and full of anecdotal stories. He restored our trust in bus tours!

The incredibly red rock was dotted with a lovely palette of greens--bright green, soft moss green, grey-green, blue-green, olive green. We saw gorges, chasms, gaps, an ocher pit (clays used for traditional aboriginal body painting), and water holes but, sadly, no animals.

Standley Chasm

Ochre Pits

Glen Helen Gorge

Ormiston Gorge

Ellery Creek waterhole

We were, however, delighted to see lots of different birds on our day’s outing: pink and white gabby galah, flocks of shimmering green budgies in flight, rusty brown speckled spinafex pigeons, bright pink and white major mitchell cockatoos, blue and green ringneck parrots, and willy wagtails. Oh my, the birds were wonderful!

major mitchell cockatoo

gulahs

camouflaged spinafix pigeon