Bush Camping in the East Macs or East Macdonnell Ranges

Just an hour or so  to the East of Alice Springs, lie the East Macdonnell Ranges with a different feel and appearance to their Western namesakes. More cattle and less spinifex lend a khaki and green colour to the landscape. At the far eastern end of the range, beyond gaps and gorges, is the Ross River Resort, a great place to camp in a paddock past the homestead and under the gum trees with the mewing babblers and screeching galahs.

For a lunchtime treat, we rustled up banana fritters in the trusty campoven on the campfire.

Under 50kms from there, up a gravel road, lies Arltunga, a gold mining site from the 1860s with atmospheric old buildings, rusting battery millheads, old mine shafts to explore, and a cemetery with simple graves for miners marked by the quartz slabs they lived and died for.