Lost in the LARAPINTA

Following the Great Walk through the central Northern territory, Thomas Bywater finds a steady rhythm along Australia’s songlines

Day one: Dreamtime

Telegraph Station to Wallaby Gap, into

Nick’s Camp; 22km

Within the first hour I’d seen a dingo, two kangaroos and two-dozen galahs. If this were a safari, I’d be happy to get back on the bus and head home.

However, wildlife watching was only part of the reason I was heading west out of Alice Springs, into Australia’s McDonnell Ranges. The dependable clicking of poles and chatter of 11 fellow hikers and three guides was a constant reminder that we were here to walk the Larapinta Trail.

The Larapinta is one of Australia’s 10 great walks. However, setting out from the most central point of the country’s landmass in a desert of Martian red, it was apparent this hike was unlike any other.

Leaving the old telegraph station in Alice, we passed the tombstones of the frontiersmen who built the town. The situation would have been ominous, were I not taking part in a World Expeditions guided trek called ‘Larapinta in Comfort’.

Instead of a shallow, dusty grave, at the end of the day’s hike waited a state-of the art eco-camp — or so the guides assured me.

Bookending the caravan of ramblers, our guides were invaluable from the start. Brett, Anita and Ried made light work of the 100km trail — topping the team up with regular water breaks, chocolate rations and snackable bits of bushlore.

The first lesson in bush survival concerned the old telegraph cable. Bushmen lost in the desert would cut the cables and wait for a repair party to set out down the line to search for the break — a trick that doubtless saved countless lives, and cost countless cricket scores. However, since the last overland message was transmitted about 55 years ago, hikers have begun carrying satellite phones. Today, it’s far safer and more sociable to stick with the guides.

The further along the trail we ventured, the clearer my picture of the desert became.

It was no longer an unknowable, red dustbowl. Even the short way we had come from Alice was full of lines, tracks and trails. Beyond the telegraph cables paths criss-crossed, picked up then took off; the tracks of the Ghan railway dissected the desert and disappeared over the horizon towards Darwin; then there were the ridges of the MacDonnell Ranges.

Songlines are an important part of the indigenous culture of central Australia. Sometimes called “dreaming tracks”, they are real paths through the landscape in which folk stories are embedded.

It is a way of memorising routes and information about the landscape, filling them with character. The Caterpillar Dreaming, for example, describes how the mountain ranges were formed by an army of retreating insects, defeated in battle.

It might be less accepted than the scientific tale of seismic folds and ridges — but it holds far more descriptive detail in terms of the landscape and important wildlife observations.

They are also aids for memory: drop a giant anthropomorphic caterpillar into your story, hey presto! It makes for a far more memorable tale.

Day 2: Detour through Arrernte land

Nick’s Camp to Simpsons Gap, plus Standley Chasm and Lookout Walk; 9km

Our journey into the Outback was split between work days and lighter rest days.

The hike out of camp to the impressive red fissure of Simpsons Gap was brisk, enjoyable and — best of all — short enough to provide us with time to fill with something other than walking.

On rest days like today, the expedition team had planned activities around the trail. Waiting for us at Standley Chasm was Deanella Mack of Cultural Conversations NT to help us connect with the local Arrernte culture. Standley Chasm, or “Angkerle Atwatye” as Dee corrected us, is a giant red fissure filled with silvery gum trees and lemon grass. The natural attraction is where she has been leading workshops into the local culture and language of the central Northern Territory.

As the only outsider in a group of Aussies, I expected this to be way over my head. However I wasn’t the only one for whom this was a new experience.

Of the 11 other walkers, only a couple had been to the Northern Territory. Sydneysiders and Melbourne-ites rarely venture into the centre; it’s even rarer they have an encounter with and indigenous language.

Unlike Te Reo, there are over 250 first languages of Australia and none of them get anywhere like the public usage Ma¯ ori does over here. Though at times awkward, it was a privilege to be part of this group as they posed questions about another side of their country — interacting with something both part of their cultural inheritance and at the same time totally alien to them. With this food for thought and conversation, it was back on the trail.

As Dee said, the first cultures of Australia have a “roundabout way” of getting to a point or a place