Oz Trip - Day 36

Day 36 – 6/6/2012 – Palm Valley

We packed up and left Glen Helen. We had to do a bit of back tracking to Hermannsburg to access the Palm Valley camp ground in the Finke Gorge National Park. It was a 4WD only camp ground. We ended up choosing Palm Valley because it sounded a lot easier to get into then the Boggy Hole section of the Finke National Park.

Good thing we are making an early start!

We were starting to have a few second thoughts after seeing this!

It was a bit of a rough track and slow going but very scenic. You had to drive through the dry Finke riverbed most of the way so there were some soft sandy sections and rocky sections. Not too hard but just slow going. It ended up taking about an hour to do the 18km into the camp grounds.  At least there weren't too many bone jarring corrugations!

When we arrived at the camp site we couldn't believe it. It was by far the best camp site that we had seen and been in so far. So much better than any of the ones that we had seen in the West MacDonnell gorges.

Just kicking back and taking it all in

Looking down on the camp ground

And you can just see us

When we arrived there were only 4 other groups but by the afternoon all of the sites had filled up.

After lunch we drove the extra 4km from the camp ground into palm grove. It was really slow going. 30-45minutes to do the 4km.

Some others that were also here.

We passed through Cycad Gorge on the way in.

Cycad Gorge

We only had time to do the short walk that took us along the top of the ridge which looked down into palm grove and back through the palm valley itself.

Red Cabbage Palms in Palm Valley

Palm Valley

The palms are called the Red Cabbage Palm and only found here, Mataranka – further north in NT and Lawn Hill National Park in QLD.

On dusk some small bats came out and were zooming around over our camp site catching tiny insects. Also a dingo with a limp was prowling around the campsites and ended up stealing one campers soap. We don't know what he intended to do with that.