We left Kings Canyon on Thursday to travel on the Mereenie Track, a bit of a "back way" to Alice Springs through the West MacDonnell Ranges, which were once as high as the Himalayas but have eroded over millions of years to a become a beautiful red-rock range full of stunning gorges. It was a rough track but delivered beautiful scenery of a small but pretty mountain range (Gardner Range). We stopped at Gosse Bluff for lunch, the site of an ancient comet strike. It has left a crater with gorgeous rocky 'hills' surrounding it, like piles of rock! We continued on to Ormiston Gorge for 3 nights.

The next day we slept in and had a cooked breakie. Lachie and I had a lazy morning reading/ playing in the dirt (I'll leave you to figure who did what) while Will rode a friends bike around and Ben and Jack went walking and exploring. Once they were back we all walked down to the waterhole for some "swimming" and fun in the sand and sun. Later that afternoon we went to a Ranger Talk about animals in the local area. It was fascinating! We learned about a tiny grub that makes a hard cocoon-like growth, called a bush coconut, on the bloodwood tree, it's only the female grub that makes them and has a very interesting life cycle. Google it! We went to bed early, listening to dingos howling!
Next day we drove out along the road to Alice Springs, stopping in at all the gorges and points of interest along the way. We had morning tea at Ellery Creek Big Hole, which was beautiful, and found some bush coconuts to try for ourselves. Jack was very brave and ate the grub inside! He said it didn't taste like anything! We all tried the inside of the 'nut' which only tasted woody. We drove on to Standley Chasm. There was a short, pretty walk up the creek bed to the chasm which was cool. With walls about 80 metres high and only about 8 metres between them we just made it at the right time when the sun shines down inside. After lunch our next stop was Serpentine Gorge, just a short pretty walk to a very cold waterhole! We headed back to camp and the boys had a swim in the waterhole. We spent the evening chatting around the communal BBQ's with fellow campers then had a rather loud and silly evening in our van while we ate tea and watched Ben pull ridiculously funny faces! It took quite a while to calm the boys down. Off to Alice Springs today for some civilisation, mobile reception, WI-FI and a huge re-stock of food!