1998 Central Australia

Image: Waterholes North of Ormiston Pound, google earth aerial view - OrmistonPound_GoogleEarth-far-view02_GE.jpg

This image shows the location of two waterholes that we walked to.

The general landscape of this area is low sparse scrub with Red Gums alongs the sandy dry river beds.

But around the water holes there are rocky bluffs rising maybe 5m above the surrounding landscape.

There two locations shown are 3km and 4km (straight line) from the Northern exit gorge of Ormiston Pound.

It is generally pretty easy walking along the dry river beds, though sometimes we walked beside the river bed along kangaroo tracks.

The water holes can be quite deep, and the water is clean eoungh to swim in, though we didn't drink it unboiled.

At least one one side of the water hole is usually bare rock. There might sometimes be 5m high rock cliffs above the water.

Occasionally you can find a spot where it water is deep enough for it to be safe to jump from high on the rocks into the water hole.

We camped at both of these water holes.

They are incredibly beautiful places.

Just north of the 4km NE waterhole are the remains of a very rough stock-yard, not used for decades.

You can see it as a square on the close-up google earth image below, OrmistonPound_NE-4km-water-holes-and-cattle-yard_GE.jpg

In 1998 cattle were still allowed to free range in this area, and one of the 4km waterholes was severely degraded by cattle hooves.

The cattle were due to be taken out of the national park in 1999.

During our second night camping in the area it rained.

We were sleeping in the open on the sandy river bed a kilometre upstream from the NE-4km waterholes

A bit after it started raining somewhere out in the blackness we heard water trickling, flowing.

In the weak torch light amid rainy total darkness, was could vaguely see a blackness of water - a river was quickly appearing a couple of metres from where we were.

We didn't sleep so well that night. We didn't have a tent. Apart of the fear of being swept away, we were also getting wet.

We put a small tarp up against a bolder, but it didn't really keep out the rain, and it was hardly secured as it was hard to do anything in the pitch dark and rain.