Five-minute read: A walk in the Red Centre gives Robert Webber a new perspective on life.
How many walks can turn your life around, especially if it is less than 8km all up? Others will testify to the power of pilgrimages but the walk that changed by life was the Riverside Walk connecting Alice Springs to the Telegraph Station, established in 1872 as the site of the first European settlement.
I was on my first trip to Alice Springs for a conference. I didn’t want to be there, which is a pity as I was the conference facilitator. I had no desire to come to the Outback, and certainly never as a camper following a cold night of misery over 30 years ago on a deflated lilo in a leaky tent in Wilpena Pound.
The desire for some ‘me time’ led me to a late afternoon walk along the Todd River to the Telegraph Station. This is a beautiful and peaceful walk with a very unassuming start in the bustle of Alice. This is not just a stroll along a dry riverbed; it is a journey through trees hundreds of years old. For the local Arrernte people the largest trees have spiritual powers that pass to the closest small tree when one dies.
It is a walk to take slowly and enjoy looking for birds and rock wallabies. However, what was most striking to me, as a first time desert visitor, was the astonishing clarity with which you see. Clear desert skies ensure that far vistas are crystal clear and it becomes a pleasure to look at the ridgelines that define the walk.
The big surprise after this little time of solitude was to arrive at the Telegraph Station Historical Reserve to find it crawling with people who had driven there. If you arrive at the settlement by the bitumen you will gain little or no idea of its relationship to the landscape but everyone will be able to appreciate the permanent waterhole there, fed by a spring that gave the township its name.
A very short distance further on is Trig Hill that offers a stunning 360˚ view that takes in the Telegraph Station, the Todd River and the MacDonnell Ranges. Here I was rewarded with an encounter with a big red kangaroo and my first view of the Larapinta Trial.
Two weeks later my enthusiasm brought me back with my wife. We walked this little track again, and then went on to walk the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta, as well as circumnavigating Uluru and the Kings Canyon rim. One year later I am sleeping on a riverbed near Ormiston Pound so I could spend a week walking with friends on the Larapinta Trail. And, I have returned to Wilpena Pound as a happy camper.