Junction Waterhole and Chamber's Pillar

There is another waterhole we discovered not too far from town called Junction Waterhole.  One Saturday morning we made our way north to have a look!  It is reached by a 4x4 track off the main highway, a bit of driving in a sandy creekbed, and a few guesses and backtracks.  There are tire tracks from other people out there, so we eventually found it by following the best followed trails and Trent's printed satellite images of the area.  Junction Waterhole is so named because it is where two rivers meet and create a waterhole in the wetter times of year.  There are big grassy benches of land on the sides of the rivers dotted with huge gum trees.  We found a rope swing that people must fly off into the water from, but the kids liked it even with dry sand below!  There are various places on the trail with fun climbing rocks, so it was a pretty fun place to explore.

Jax swinging it up at Junction Waterhole

Beaux on the swing

Jones was terrified, but I caught one smile!

We actually tried to find the waterhole first on the night before.  Friday night (still pizza night even in Australia) we grabbed some pizza and headed out to have a picnic.  Our hunger won the day before we could find Junction Waterhole, so we pulled off into the bush near a big flat rock, had our pizza picnic on it, watched the beautiful Australian sunset and then headed home.



A few weeks later, we were in the Disco again tooling south to visit Chamber's Pillar, a natural rock pillar that was used historically to mark the way for travelers and pioneers to the area. 





The pillar is a few hours drive away and the track was horribly corrugated...probably the worst we've encountered so far here in Central Australia.  We were bumped and jostled until we thought we'd fall apart, so it was quite a relief to arrive. 





Chamber's Pillar has a campground and several pit toilets as far as amenities go, and a nice walking trail around the pillar and some scaffolding and metal railings up to the base of the vertical rock part.  There are hundreds of names carved into the stone; some are historically significant and some "vandalism."  I suppose even the vandals will be historic at some point in the future...We did not carve ours in, of course.

There are also some aboriginal carvings in the rocks thereabouts that was fun to see too.  

There was another rock formation close by called Castle Rock.  When viewed from a certain angle it looks like a huge stone castle with towers and battlements. 







We walked around it as well, and even surprised a kangaroo on the back side.  We got to watch it leap and bound all the way down until it disappeared into the bush and rocks below. 

We stayed long enough to catch the sun setting and reflecting red off the rocks before starting off on the torturous ride home.  The track is awful, but the campground seemed full (there were maybe 6 or 8 spots) so it must be a popular destination.  We had brought a cooler (called Esky here) with sandwiches and such, so had a light dinner on the fly.  It really is a lovely time of year here...the wildflowers are blooming everywhere.  They don't survive in the hot, hot summers, so it is nice to see so much color:  purples, white and yellow, bright reds and oranges.  It was a long trek for a little adventure, but now we've been there, done that!

Stay tuned for more...coming soon!
Hilary