Mt Giles, Tjoritja (West MacDonnell National Park), NT

Woke with the alarm at 4am! Walking by 6:15am. Still dark and we use head torches for the first 1-2km before there is enough light to walk by. But, it is a beautiful clear morning - there’s a pink glow in the sky. At the bloodwood tree we stop to put on our gaiters, then, head off track as the first sun hits the peaks around us. Walking through the magnificent bowl of Ormiston Gorge in Tjoritja (West MacDonnell National Park) we are encircled by beauty. Ahead looms our distant destination - Mt Giles, bathed in the light of the day ahead.

The third highest peak in the Northern Territory, Mt Giles, is a well established off-track destination  in the West Macs. It offers vast and spectacular views. There are track notes in print and information online - Chapman, Daly, blogs both old and new. So with all that information out there on the world wide Webber I’m going to let Caz’s photos do the speaking and the inspiring. I’m going to focus on experience and what can be discovered under the surface of the landscape, and the bushwalker.

There really is only one season for walking in central Australia - winter. If you are from southern states, it will feel like summer. And, if you are not inclined to getting up in the dark and walking before sunrise, then this place may not be for you. Because winter afternoons are hot on the treeless ridges and plains. And, if you cannot learn to sit lazily beneath a river red gum, or on the shady side of a mountain, for hours and hours in the hot afternoon, then maybe, also, this place is not for you. Those afternoons are like a mediation, or mindfulness. City folk pay big bucks for workshops and retreats on this kind of thing. Bushwalkers in the centre of Australia on hot winter afternoons become like practiced yogis and wise hermits - tucked in cool, remote pockets of empty country becoming attuned to the sound of birds migrating in the landscape, insects moving, breezes and stillness, the inner workings of the body and thoughts shifting in and out of focus. Embrace it. Sink into it. 

On our first day, when the alarm went off at 4am, we walked across Ormiston Pound and arrived at the base of Mt Giles by 12 noon, then — cycads, wattle, bowerbirds, honeyeaters, rock climbs up dry waterfalls, finding good water, exploring into the crevices of the mountain, climbing up the creek, ghost gums, curry bush, rock daisy leaves smeared on our skin as fly repellent. An afternoon cuppa. The full moon rising as the sun falls. 

There are a variety of routes up Mt Giles but certainly there is only one way to climb it - early and slowly. When you reach the top, the distinctive summit cairn and drum-topped pole also houses a log book. This extract:

“2 May 2010 Mac Moyses, David Ross (the other one, not CLC) Agree with many others, the best views in the Macs. Why do people have to say how long it took them? Anyhow, got here in 24:32 from Little Big Rock in bare feet, blindfolded, with packs full of rocks - only to find that Dave had left the prawn cocktail sauce in the car!”

We had carried up our water needs for the day and a night, so we could camp high on the mountain. It meant 24 hours of getting to know the summit and its spectacular view. The pictures tell more than a thousand gushing words. And after sunset the orange glow on the western horizon burned for ages, it cast beautiful light on our faces and on the hill and even on the clouds above. Then the moon rose in the hour after and it looked as hot as the sun. 

At bedtime we noticed the few clouds above us had got dark and low. We had no tent or bivvies with us and, as the first drops of rain fell, we lay in our sleeping bags discussing waterproofing options - our pack liners, our first aid space blanket. But the rain stopped before it had even really started. Just the clanging of the trig drum woke me once in the night - it rang three bells, I am glad it did not ring five.

After a night on Mt Giles we returned to the land below and the water it held in its shady gorges. The water was meagre but clear and we refilled all our containers - I loaded up with 4 litres, Caz with 4.5 litres and out we went - beating a path back to the dry bed of Ormiston Creek in the middle of the pound. The creek was dry and usually is. The natural spring at the base of Mt Giles is, I believe, reliable. But then climate change and increasing droughts could well alter our faith. 

We camped near a stand of delightful (and ancient big) river red gums, that lined the creek and offered good shade for the afternoon ahead. The largest tree had a slightly sloping trunk and marked along this were a series of ascending small triangles cut into the bark - perfect footholds, cut by someone’s ancestor, and obviously used for climbing up and out to the trees higher limbs. Perhaps to a native bee hive, perhaps to gather lerp.   

That afternoon, Caz wanders off and takes photos of the Sturt Desert Rose, the ghost gum, the curry wattle. A sacred kingfisher lands in the river red gum and dives off to grab something from a nearby tree. Four Major Mitchell cockatoos fly overhead, so close their wings are burnt pink and I can hear the air in their feathers. Then the mountain range beneath Mt Giles begins to glow - it becomes redder and redder. It literally makes me rise to my feet in wonder. It gets richer and richer and I grow more content; happier and luckier. 

The mountain was named after Ernest Giles, the English-born explorer famed for his exploits crossing Australia’s western deserts in the early 1870s. Mt Giles is known locally, in the language of the Arrernte, as Ltharrkelipeke, pronounced ool-dar-ka-lee-pa-ka. But Giles would never have known this, he had a particularly unenlightened view of indigenous Australians and not until his later (and consequently successful) expeditions did he employ Aborigines. Caz and I have both just finished reading “Australia’s Last Explorer: Ernest Giles” by Geoffrey Dutton. It’s a great read but a disappointing one as well. The author, Dutton, was a poet, and was drawn to write about Giles because of the explorer’s penchant for poetry - his journals are strewn with quotes from poets of the time as well his own vivid imagery and language, which make them some of the most readable explorer journals in Australian history. 

But if you want some terrific, modern, Mt Giles bushwalking poetry look no further than Alice Springs poet Michael Giacometti. Particularly his whimsical poem, Overnight with Franz Near Mt Giles. Then also try his Not the Larapinta Trail haiku. In fact, I am happy here, leaving you with his words not mine:

Trek on your morning shadow 

and bear always off track 

onto roo pads

- Michael Giacometti.

All this moving on 

packing and un- 

but of your past no trace remains

- Michael Giacometti.

We would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands we walk through and pay our respects to Aboriginal Elders past and present. Thank you, for enduring our presence in these places.

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