GORGE-ous!!! (pun completely intended)

Once we made it back to Alice Springs from Kings Canyon, we decided to stay 3 nights in our old stomping grounds of Stuart Park and take short day-trips if we were to go anywhere.

Our first trip was to Ormiston Gorge which was actually recommended to us by a really nice couple (Ellen&Peter) that I met in Yulara and then met up again in Kings Canyon. They said: it was the most beautiful gorge they had seen to date, and true to their word, both Laurie and I were incredibly IMPRESSED!!

The gorge:

Me and the gorge:

We hiked the Ghost Gum Tree Trail which turned out to be a really nice 2Km walk (we were really happy to keep our walks fairly short due to the heat), filled with beautiful gum-trees (no doubt!!):




And since, it’s just a theme for me to be hugging a tree, I went full-on this time and literally HUGGED the tree with arms and legs:




So, I know that for many of you, my walks and hikes through the Outback look like “walks in the park” (literally)…but I will have you know that they are far from that with the incredible and ever-present presence of the “pesky Australian fly”. I can hardly believe that I failed to mention these incredibly annoying insects that I have had to face every single day since leaving civilization, these PESTS that fly up your nose, crawl into your ears, snuggle into your eye-sockets, kamikaze down your throat, fly around your drink, sit on your food, lodge themselves into everything that has anything to do with anything to with you!!! I MEAN: DAMN!!! I hate these flies…and you end up resorting to extreme measures to try and avoid them—like wearing these incredibly fashionable “nets” over your face. And believe me, I love my fly-net. I cower under mine at every moment any one little bugger starts to “test” me:



Unbelievable, these flies!!! They’re free-loaders too…they just hitch any old ride from anyone who goes by!!

Just some food for thought here: this gorge was formed by shear forces of nature: sun, wind and water…and what amazes me the most is the shear force with which nature will fight back. Look at this gum tree!!!

The struggle of the gum tree: