Entry 4 – 2024 – McDonnell Ranges, NT – Palm Valley
Palm Valley had been on our wish list for a long time, as a place to visit, and we were keen to tick it off. It was promoted as a 4WD track, travelling along the Finke River bed for the best part of 22 kilometres.
We had watched a couple of videos where people had taken caravans into Palm Valley recently and all seemed to be acceptable for caravans our size.
Leaving Alice Springs, we were looking forward to our Palm Valley experience. It wasn’t long before the presence of the magnificent West McDonnell Ranges tantalized our vision boosting our feel-good sensations.
At the start of the track into Palm Valley we reduced our tyre pressures. The viewing was almost immediately splendid.
We were a bit over half way when we came across signage notifying, we were entering the Finke Gorge National Park. We deviated left at the sign and saw a large section of soft river sand in front. In the middle of this sandy patch was a very bogged caravan. We immediately stopped, staying on terra firmer.
Ironically, prior to leaving home we had purchased a new set of tracks to assist getting out of a bog. We provided the other caravan occupants with all our gear, tyre deflaters, four tracks and a shovel as they had neglected to have any.
A tourist bus kindly stopped and helped with another shovel and more tracks. After many attempts, we were finally successful in moving the caravan back onto the hard rocky river bed.
Then it was our turn. Well. we didn’t fare much better. We also required some attempts to clear ourselves with the tracks and for the last bit another 4WD provided us with assistance with an extraction.
By then we had quite an audience, expecting publicity of our demise to pop up on various social media web sites.
An estimated hours’ drive turned into around four hours of hard work. We even had to assist another bogged vehicle a bit further along. We had our doubts if this vehicle (low ground clearance, non-4wd) would have been able to negotiate the really soft sandy section further along.
Thankfully there was only the one section that caused us grief.
We were pleased with the ambience of the campground.
Our bodies were feeling very weary and we were in bed early. But our minds refused to rest for both of us. How were we going to negotiate the stretch of about 200 metres of soft, boggy sand on our way out?
Our conclusion, our rig was too heavy to travel along this stretch of soft sand. We had about 200 litres = 200 kilograms of water on board, we could off load. Normally we are quite frugal with our water consumption. It was very hard on our mind set, we had to use this water - or drain the tanks.
Our new caravan had a washing machine. We wore the cleanest clothing in the campground, having washed our clothes daily during our stay! We had lots of showers with the need to stop that reflex movement from turning the water off – from our normal ritual of damp down, turn off water, soap up, turn water on to rinse off. We also jiggled the position for some of our gear to reduce the downward load on our tow tug rear wheels and thought we might drop our tyre pressures to just under 20 psi for our outward drive?
The following morning, we drove to Palm Valley. The signage showed it as 4 kilometres to Palm Valley from the campground and allow 45 minutes for the drive.
It took us exactly 45 minutes to travel the 4 kilometres. We were constantly stopping, getting out of the 4wd to assess the best options to negotiate the drop downs, crests, holes and so on. We made it ok. Unfortunately, the pictures failed to show the intricacy of the track. The picture of the 4wd on the rocks shows the rear wheel at close to maximum articulation/extension.
Palm Valley, wow, oh wow. It was fabulous, sensational and more. Best presented by some pictures.
We were on the Palm Valley 5-kilometre loop walk. Once past the 2-kilometre section populated with palm trees the valley opened up. The track then climbed upwards onto a plateau, with the vegetation dramatically transforming to a more desert region, which we were in.
Some more pictures of the return drive.
From nearby the campground there was the option of another two walking trails. We were conscious of the amount of exertion we were subjecting our bodies too. It had been a long time since we had enjoyed the spoils of exploring our surroundings. We thought it best to build up our stamina, pacing out our walks over the five days we were planning to stay.
Day one workout experience was spent digging with more digging to get ourselves out of our soft sandy predicament. Day two, walking the Palm Valley circuit. Day three we chose the shorter of the two walks available from the campground, deciding to assess how our bodies were responding to the extra labours. The Kalarranga Walk, still equated to around a 4-kilometre walk from the campground, with some scrabbling up rocky slopes to a lookout viewing area.
Yes, we did detect some weariness of our bodies and were looking forward to completing the second longer walk from the campground the following day.
Weather changes can have a dramatic impact at times, more so in outback regions. Prior to leaving for Palm Valley the Bureau of Meteorology were predicting perfect weather conditions for our planned five nights stay at Palm Valley campground.
Later, on our arrival day the BOM changed their prediction to 0 – 3 millimetres of rain. The BOM update their web site in the morning and late afternoon. This is where the BOM started with more psychological influence on our Palm Valley experience.
Rain predictions kept growing with each new weather forecast. 0 – 3, grew to 0 – 10, to 10 – 20, to 10 – 30, staying at the 10 – 30 millimetres prediction of rain.
Palm Valley was such a beautiful location, our good feel senses wanted us to stay as long as possible.
Initially we thought a bit of rain might be helpful with compacting the troublesome sandy section for our return drive out. We were rather anxious about how we would cope with the drive out.
We thought we would wait and see. It certainly would have been a grand setting to get stuck at for a period of time.
Night three around 4 am Steve woke and it was as if all the fog between his ears had instantly cleared.
How would we negotiate the track along the Finke River (for about 20 kilometres) if it started to flow? We needed to leave as soon as possible. We packed the caravan in readiness to leave while waiting for the next BOM forecast.
The weather prediction was for fine weather during the day, with rain predicted to commence later that night and continue for about a 24-hour period.
When the forecast was released, it was still at the 10 – 30 millimetres of rain. Grrr.
We left before the arrival of the sun at first light, wanting to attempt the boggy sandy patch while it was still under the influence of the morning dew, before it was dug/softened up by other vehicles during the day.
Of interest one of the persons who helped dig us out when we were bogged commented this section hadn’t previously been a problem. There was another section further along where people were getting stuck until it was graded. Of interest we had some good vision of this section on our way out. Our thoughts instantly focused on the boggy section ahead of us and how deep might the soft sand be.
We arrived at the soft sandy section and stopped. Steve walked it with the spade and smoothed out some sections. The rest is history. Video attached.
Once our focus on the soft sandy section was behind us, the grand setting around us boosted our well-being, evaporating all that niggling anxiety.
Once at the end of the dirt road all our tyres were reinflated. We were happy to be out safely. Though we were sad we only managed two days of exploring activities out of the five we had allocated.
We spent the night at a roadside rest area between Palm Valley and Alice Springs. Of note the steady rain started around midnight as predicted by the BOM and continued for the predicted 24 hours.
We headed back to Alice Springs accompanied by rain. Even the normal dry, Todd River at Alice Springs was flowing with water.
It would have been another special experience to view the surrounds of Palm Valley with water flowing off the peaks and through the water courses. Though we suspected foot and vehicle movement would have been impacted to the degree it would have been almost impossible.
As we were bunker-ed down at Alice Springs we used this time to complete the record of our Palm Valley experience and there had been 38 millimeters of rain fall recorded with more to come.
