Chambers Pillar and Rainbow Valley are the Red Centre’s best-kept secrets, says Nick Squires
Looming out of the endless spinifex plains and red sand dunes like a giant chimney, Chambers Pillar is visible from miles around. At sunrise and sunset, its orange, red and white layers of sandstone are bathed in a fiery glow. A 51-metre-tall stack of crumbling rock, it’s like something out of the American Wild West — you can almost imagine settlers and canvas-covered wagons rolling by amid clouds of dust.
And yet this is the Australian outback and it is almost unknown. While hundreds of thousands of tourists beat the well worn path to Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) and Kings Canyon each year, Chambers Pillar attracts just a handful of visitors. Along with another spectacular rock formation — Rainbow Valley, 100 kilometres to the north — it is one of the Red Centre’s best-kept secrets.
The two features are the highlights of a 4WD loop, which starts from Alice Springs, heads south into the desert, and then connects with the Stuart Highway back to Alice. Although the drive can be done in one day, it is better to take two or three days to savour the isolation and atmosphere of this little known area of central Australia.
The route starts five kilometres south of Alice Springs, where you leave the bitumen and turn right onto Old South Road (also signposted as Maryvale Road), a dirt track which runs close to the old Ghan railway track, once the lifeline between Alice Springs and Adelaide. Around 30 kilometres down the track lie the Ewaninga rock carvings, a collection of ancient petroglyphs which are believed to have been created 20,000 years ago — long before the Pyramids. They form one of central Australia’s earliest and richest art sites. Concentric circles, wavy lines and animal tracks are etched into blood-red slabs of rock overlooking a normally dried-up clay pan, baked hard by the sun. To the local Arrernte Aborigines, this is a powerful men’s place, known as Napatika, and much of the meaning of the symbols remains a closely guarded secret. Visitors are asked not to climb on the carvings or damage them in any way. As Stuart Oliver, the site’s senior Aboriginal custodian, says: “Take photos but don’t touch, leave it alone, have a look, that’s all right.”
Back on the dirt road, the sand becomes progressively redder and deeper as you head south towards the fringes of the mighty Simpson Desert. Brown falcons swoop between desert oaks, and the surrounding plains are studded with flat-topped hills resembling Mayan temples. Just over 100 kilometres south of Alice Springs, you come to Maryvale Station, which has a small shop selling fuel, basic supplies and food, including frozen kangaroo tails, popular with the local Aboriginal community of Titjikala.
The track climbs a steep, rugged ridge before descending into a sea of red dunes which lead, at last, to Chambers Pillar. The pillar was discovered and named by one of Australia’s greatest explorers, John MacDouall Stuart, who passed this way in 1860 on one of several gruelling expeditions to cross the continent from south to north.
Stuart, who likened the feature to “a locomotive engine with its funnel”, named it after his friend and financial backer James Chamber. Twelve years later, fellow explorer Ernest Giles wrote: “The appearance of this feature, I should imagine, to be unique in Australia, and it is not likely that any future explorer will discover so singular a monument.” It was used as a landmark by settlers and surveyors, many of whom carved their names in the soft white sandstone at the base of the pillar after slogging through hundreds of kilometres of trackless, waterless desert.
Pioneer pastoralists William and Mary Hayes, for instance, passed by in 1884. The earliest inscriptions date from 1870. The top half of the pillar consists of hard, cinnamon-red rock, while beneath is a band of creamy white sandstone and patches of sulphur yellow, which crumble at the touch.
At first and last light the pillar assumes a fiery intensity — as does nearby Castle Rock, another impressive sandstone formation which is home to agile rock wallabies. Nestled between the two features is an idyllic campsite shaded by desert oaks — the perfect spot from which to explore the area.
To get to Rainbow Valley, backtrack to Maryvale Station and continue north before turning left on the Hugh River Stock Route, another dirt track. The road, which is in good condition, passes through pastoral properties and crosses the existing Ghan Railway before connecting with the paved Stuart Highway. A few kilometres up the road, at Stuarts Well, is Jim’s Place, a roadhouse with a café, fuel and accommodation, and home to the world’s only singing dingo. For reasons that no one has been able to explain, Dinky Di the dingo, who was found in the wild as a pup, starts howling whenever the roadhouse piano is played. In fact, so keen is he to accompany the music that he leaps onto the piano keys!
Just north of Jim’s Place, a dirt track leads to Rainbow Valley, a jagged, saw-toothed saddle-back ridge made up of orange, red, white and purple rock. Like Chambers Pillar, this rugged sandstone bluff is most impressive at sunrise and sunset, when its rainbow colours are bathed in a soft, golden glow.
Walk along the base of the cliffs and you will come across great chunks of fallen rock, some of them weathered and pockmarked like coral. Further on, a vast natural amphitheatre rings with the cry of birds and the sound of the wind whistling through desert oaks.
There is a large clay pan which, on the rare occasions when it is filled with rain, gives a mirror-like reflection of the multi-coloured ridge behind. It is a magical place.
A 40-minute return walk leads to Mushroom Rock, an outlandish formation with a natural tunnel formed by millions of years of wind and rain erosion. There is a basic campsite at Rainbow Valley; as with Chambers Pillar, however, you must bring your own firewood and water. Once you’ve soaked up the atmosphere, head back down the dirt road, connect with the Stuart Highway and from there it’s 100 kilometres back to Alice Springs.
While not as famous as Uluru or as tall as Kata Tjuta, Chambers Pillar and Rainbow Valley are, in their own way, every bit as memorable. On some days you will have them to yourself; at most, there will be just a handful of visitors.
With boundless horizons, challenging desert tracks and rolling sand dunes, they are remote, romantic and mysterious — the very essence of the arid heart of Australia.
Total distance of the drive: 559 kilometres.
Best time to visit: April - October (summer is scorching) but it’s best to be prepared and take clothes for all types of weather.
Food and fuel is available in Alice Springs, at Maryvale Station and at Jim’s Place, on the Stuart Highway.
For those after a long haul drive, the Savannah Way is a themed adventure drive that stretches from the lush tropics of Queensland, through the vast open spaces of the Northern Territory to the magical landscapes of Western Australia, and its new interpetive signage makes for an even smoother self-drive adventure.
4WD
