A Day of Rain, Australian Outback

To one who was expecting desert like conditions, extreme dry temperatures and nothing but blue skies today was a rude awakening! We spent the night camping near the Glen Helen Gorge on the banks of the barely flowing Finke River. This River is among the oldest rivers in the world – dated at a whopping 65 million years – give or take a few million!

We awoke to rain falling on our tents at 4am and not letting up for several hours. After several days of getting up in the 4am hour, today was a welcome change with the ‘rise and shine’ call coming around 8am. We headed to Ormiston Gorge to hike the Ghost Gum trail (named after the Eucalyptus trees with white bark – they look like ghosts at night). The river was full – our guide has never seen it this full before. With so much water swimming was excellent all the way up the narrow gorge for many meters.

We left and it started pouring buckets – Ellery Creek is a massive water hole that was filled to the brim. On the dirt road leading to this swimming hole little frogs were jumping all over the road and the nearby normally dry creeks were flowing with water. A large piece of wood from a eucalyptus tree was hanging high up in another tree – an obvious sign that there is some serious water flow through here during major storms.

The Finke River which was nearly dry when we left our campground was a raging river of brown water and suds when we arrived back in the afternoon.

Pulling into “The Alice” (Alice Springs) at the end of the day I was treated to see the Todd River was actually flowing – this river is often billed as “the always dry Todd River”!

At times today it was extremely humid and felt like we were hiking in a rainforest!

#ad I have been commissioned by and will be working with Tourism Australia for this program and resulting content. #epicOZ #corOZpondent