How I did this famed Aussie desert trail for a fraction of the price
By Daisy Dumas
When wanderer and camel wrangler Robyn Davidson trekked across the central desert region in 1977, water was high on her agenda. Access to potable supplies was her lifeblood and her route-maker. Somewhere along those 2763 kilometres from Mparntwe (Alice Springs), to the Indian Ocean, she learnt to rehydrate only when resting, drinking cups of tea in the early morning and again at her next camp come afternoon.
I considered this approach as the sun reached above Tjoritja (West MacDonnell Ranges), near Davidson’s starting point. The air was bone-dry, shade was scant. How did she do it? I wondered, as I began my third litre of water since dawn.
Trek Larapinta offers an economical way to tick off an iconic walk, while volunteering.Credit: Trek Larapinta
For a place so dry, water is an ever-present force on the Larapinta Trail. Its absence is weighty, but so are its immense effects on the shape of the land and its culture. The 223-kilometre track, completed in 2002, is named for the Arrernte word for the Finke, the world’s oldest river. It is punctuated by waterholes that offer something like deliverance to the weary walker. And, where there is no natural source, water is tanked into remote sites for the benefit of the campers who tackle this circa 16-day trek unassisted.
I’d wanted to walk the famous track for a decade or so, but I also wanted to learn, get my hands dirty and feel like I had given a little, too. Volunteering with Trek Larapinta combines the adventure and fully-catered ease of an ecotourism hiking tour with a little graft (and lower costs). And so, there I was, raiding my water supplies after a morning cutting through the serenity and shoulder-high grasses along the Finke riverbed with a whipper snipper.
Throughout our six-day trip, the river accompanied me and my nine fellow volunteers and four guides. Like so many in Australia, it is ephemeral, a secret river flowing underground, below river red gum boughs and dingo tracks. Where it rose above ground, its salty shallows were a small miracle.
For a place so dry, water is an ever-present force on the Larapinta Trail.Credit: Trek Larapinta
As part of a 10-strong group of volunteers, I was expected to lend a hand clearing paths and fixing signs and fences. Depending on the job and working to rangers’ requests, our manual labour could take an hour one day, or span the length of a gentle 10-kilometre hike another. We focused on sections 8 to 12 of the trail (the track is divided into 12 sections, 12 being furthest west), travelling by troop carrier from our Ormiston Creek camp to trailhead each morning.
The desert is a long way from Tasmania’s forests and the home of Trek Tours Australia founder, Holger Strie. Trek Larapinta’s first volunteer trip ran in 2012 with the aim of giving something back to the trail. Friends of the Larapinta Trail community group soon emerged, and Strie credits Parks and Wildlife NT as “revolutionary” for its part in keeping the volunteer program alive. Insurance and red tape tend to stymie initiatives such as this, making it a rare, though profit-free, product.
Strie takes a long-term view, with volunteering and sustainable practices doing their part for the land and its traditional owners. Our camp ran on a water quota of 7.5 litres per person per day. (In Sydney, a single toilet flush is about 5 litres.) This means some well-used washing up suds and clever handwashing stations fashioned from tin cans. It also means solar heated bird baths – a bowl of hot water in a private shower area built from the logs and rocks to hand. A warm wash, purging dust and sweat, has never felt so transformatively delicious. Toilets are composting and limited to number twos, the ‘humanure’ from which eventually nourishes grazing paddocks at a farm in Alice. All food scraps go to the farm’s chickens.
Volunteers help to clear paths and fix signs and fences, while taking in the splendour of the landscape.Credit: Trek Larapinta
For the past four years, Strie has been working out a way to offset all carbon emissions from the business, including guests’ and guides’ flights, into biodiversity restoration projects in Tasmania. It will take at least five years of data collection to be able to claim carbon negativity for the company. “These things take time,” he said.
This is the land of Pine Gap, of Tracks, of Albert Namatjira and of songlines that reach far beyond history. But it is always in flux. A week before my trip, bushfire ripped through Ormiston Pound and by the time we walked over the blackened ground, the bright green fuzz of young buffel grass – an invasive species and a nemesis to park rangers – was already established. And, while ecotourism forms a growing element of Alice Springs’ economy and the Larapinta is a significant employer, trade is seasonal and tourism in the region has been badly knocked by reports of crime in the town.
A sense of permanent impermanence seeped in as we settled into a gentle rhythm of early rises, hikes, landcare, swims and long dinners. Mobile phone reception collapsed the minute we left Alice. I missed my family. I didn’t miss the ability to make a payment instantaneously or ‘like’ a near-stranger’s update. It occurred to me that this was yet another happy accident of Australia’s vastness: reception-free solitude is becoming a rare and highly sought-after global commodity. One day, we’ll pay a premium to drop out of signal; to be nowhere. Instead, the stars formed a web above our swags at night. I was closer to living not by rush hours and alarm clocks, but by moon and by shadow, and always, always, by water.
Hit Tjoritja at the right time of the year and the summer rains will have replenished waterholes before the dry depletes them again. After trekking to Ormiston Gorge, I swam to the end of its bottle-green pool and climbed onto a slab of sun-warmed Heavitree Quartzite, alone and insignificant below towering cliffs. Near me, iron-rich steak rocks – which look like the centrepiece of a meat raffle – sat close to ripple rocks, which once lay at the bottom of the ocean. The Alice Springs Orogeny created these lands around 350 million years ago, but the stories that make sense of it are bound in its people and plants today.
Hit Tjoritja at the right time of the year and the summer rains will have replenished waterholes.Credit: iStock
There are seeds that germinate only after fire, and eucalypts that angle their leaves 90 degrees from the fierce sun. At Ulpma/Serpentine Gorge, precious water is protected by the Carpet Snake Dreaming. At the Ochre Pits, a site of men’s ceremony, crumbling layers of prized red, yellow and white ochre appeared pixelated in the cliff side. When the Arrernte prepared ochre, they sang over it to enhance its healing powers.
Back at camp near Yeperenye, the Caterpillar Dreaming, a flock of pink cockatoos screeched past the kitchen tent where our guide cooked mutton curry, filling the air with spice.
Rangers informed us that the helipad on section 12 of the trail needed attention. We began the 16-kilometre round-trip from Redbank Gorge to the summit of Mount Sonder at 3am, walking uphill in the pitch black.
The climb became meditative, my focus narrowed to the light cast by my head torch. Inkiness arrived before the pale sun and, suddenly, the desert spread out below us. From 1380 metres, I could see the ring of Tnorala, or Gosse’s Bluff meteor crater, and the chink in the cliffs at Glen Helen. On the way down, we brushed past bush lemongrass and bush tomato, then stopped to lop spinifex and saplings from the mountain’s emergency helipad. We were back at camp for a knock-out brunch well before midday.
That afternoon, our last, we received news of a cyclone barrelling towards us from Broome. “This is not normal,” said Jen Kreusser, our guide. Cyclones belong to January and February, not April.”
We battened down the hatches and wished our temporary home luck as we drove away. “The rivers might flow,” she added, nonplussed.
Sure enough, my plane heaved up and away from Arrernte lands in the throes of that unseasonal storm. We punched through cloud before I could check whether those ancient rivers were again in flow.
THE DETAILS
Fly
Qantas and Virgin operate direct flights from Australian capital cities to Alice Springs.
Trek
Trek Larapinta’s annual six-day volunteer expedition costs $995 per person. This includes all camping equipment and campsite amenities, guiding, three meals a day plus snacks and non-alcoholic drinks, transfers from Mparntwe, and all park fees.
Accommodation
Tents, swags and all linen are provided.
Volunteers
Volunteers are expected to have a moderate level of general fitness and no special skills are required. The daily program changes depending on where and how rangers need assistance.
The writer travelled at her own expense.
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