Day 46. Friday 2nd August 2013.

A nice little sleep-in and then off we go for a huge 80 k drive to Ross River Homestead, which is located due east of Alice at the end of the Ross Highway.

We travelled along and through the East MacDonnell Ranges, spectacular country and not as well known as the West MacDonnell's. One really does need to visit both and appreciate their individual beauty.

We set up camp in a wonderful spot. It is quite isolated and the power is supplied by a generator that runs only from 0700 to 0900 and then again from 1630 to 2100-ish. Actually all times in the Territory as '-ish'. Anyway, although this place is isolated it is wonderful and a joy to behold....even though there is a lot of earth-moving going on nearby. management is improving the camp-ground and of course one cannot make an omelette without breaking an egg or two..therefore we do have some dust and noise but the ambiance of the place gets us over that little problem.We both loved it.

Ross River Homestead Resort

After the chats and things we drove to Trephina Gorge and went for a couple of long-ish walks. Beautiful country. The photos I took really do not do the place justice.

Trephina Gorge

The place is managed by Roman Long Ukrainian Name, who was a border at Chanel in Geelong at the same time I was St. Joey's. We had a chat about those times and he mentioned a few names that I knew. These sort of things never cease to amaze me. His son Shane runs the bar back at the actual homestead. Bit of a character is Shane and you can never be sure if he is fair dinkum or just taking the piss. We wandered over to the bar at about 1630-ish and he then organises for us to have a bit of a 4WD tour of the place courtesy of driver Jen, a young Canadian back-packer. Bloody rough trip it was too but a nice thing to do. 'Course when we got back we had to have a beer or two to talk about it...so we did.

I got a bit of firewood so that we could sit abound a nice fire before and after tea. Pure bliss.