Red Centre Way

The West MacDonnell Ranges, aka the West Macs, point due west from Alice Springs and are one of the Red Centre's standout natural features. One of the world's oldest mountain ranges, they're split by a series of gaps and gorges, and the first of these outside of Alice is the gorgeous Simpsons Gap. From the car park it's a short walk to the mouth of the gap, and if you come at dawn or dusk this is the most reliable place in the area to try to spot black-footed rock wallabies. They're elusive, but scan the boulders and red cliffs that enclose the waterhole and they might just be peering back.

See a gap with a difference by stretching your legs on a walk into Inarlanga Pass. From Serpentine Gorge, it's a short walk up to the site of a dam constructed for the first resort - a dismal failure - built along the West Macs. You can swim here (have a look for frogs on the cliffs around the base of the waterfall), but it's also little more than a two-kilometre walk along the range's foot from here into Inarlanga Pass. Unlike other water-filled gaps, this one is dry and brimming with cycads, a fern-like plant that remembers the dinosaurs - cycads have been on Earth for more than 200 million years.

Just a few kilometres beyond Serpentine Gorge is a bend in a creek bed known as the Ochre Pits. Here, local Arrernte people have long gathered ochre for ceremonial use and for trade with other Aboriginal people. A short walk leads to the creek with its high bank of ochre cliffs, which are an ice-cream-like swirl of colours - yellow, purple, white. Guides are available and they will talk you through the history and stories of this sacred place.

And the adjoining Glen Helen Homestead Lodge provides the only hotel-style accommodation along the entire line of the West MacDonnell Ranges. There are motel-style rooms, the classic outback experience of the stockmen quarters, camping and a restaurant and bar with an outdoor terrace peering onto the red rock walls that enclose the gorge.

The West Macs end in a shapely blaze of glory atop Mt Sonder, known to local Aboriginal people as the 'Sleeping Woman', (the reasons will become obvious from its profile) and immortalised in a number of paintings by famed Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira. You'll see Sonder along the drive, but it's best experienced by climbing it - about a six-hour return walk from Redbank Gorge. The view from the top takes in the straight lines of the West Macs, Glen Helen Gorge and Gosse Bluff crater. Tradition is to hike through the night for a truly spectacular sunrise from Sonder's summit.

As the Red Centre Way veers south and away from the West Macs, you'll come to a turning to one of Australia's most curious mountain 'ranges'. Gosse Bluff (Tornala to the local Arrernte people) sits like a beauty spot in the desert, and is a circle of hills thought to have been created by the rippled impact of a meteorite striking Earth around 140 million years ago. There are a couple of short walks here that provide good perspective on the crater, though please note that it's an Aboriginal sacred site and access inside the crater and to the rim is restricted.

Detour back east around 50 kilometres and you'll come to Hermannsburg, an Aboriginal community that was established as a Lutheran mission in the 1880s. Today you can wander around the Hermannsburg Historical Precinct with its whitewashed buildings and church. Hermannsburg was the birthplace of landscape painter Albert Namatjira, arguably the most famous of all Aboriginal artists. The Namatjira Gallery displays original paintings by the artist and his family, as well as terracotta works from famed Hermannsburg Potters.

Turning back west, the Red Centre Way journeys through beautifully nondescript desert lands to reach Kings Canyon, a massive natural amphitheatre framed with rust-coloured 100-metre-high cliffs. If you want the full wow factor, take a helicopter flight over the canyon; otherwise hike the six-kilometre Canyon Rim Walk. This lingering look over the edge heads through the Lost City, where striped sandstone domes (think of a scale-model version of Western Australia's famed Bungles Bungles) rise from the earth, and a lush, shaded oasis known as the Garden of Eden is situated. This is especially picturesque if you come after rain as its waterfalls may even be flowing. Kings Canyon Resort offers accommodation and camping.

As you drive south from Kings Canyon, you'll spy a flat-topped red mountain that so many people mistake for Uluru - some locals even call it Fool-uru. Mt Conner stands at a similar height above the sands as Uluru, but there the comparisons realistically end. Mt Conner is millions of years older than Uluru with a classic mesa (tabletop) shape to Uluru's rounded figure. You'll come to a Mt Conner lookout point beside the road about 20 kilometres before you reach Curtin Springs, but the mountain is on private land, so can only be accessed on tours out of Uluru or Curtin Springs.