Simpsons Gap is less than 30 minutes drive from Alice Springs and is part of Tjoritja / West MacDonnell National Park.

We arrived at about 10am and it was a short walk from the main car park to the ‘gap’ itself – which consisted of some towering red cliffs with a narrow passageway between them. The passageway was full of water as it is a permanent waterhole. We had come prepared with our own coffee and so we drank it with a view of the gap.

A short drive back the way that we came took us to the car park for the Cassia Hill Walk – a one hour loop walk up a hill with good views of Simpsons Gap in the distance.

Next up was a two hour return walk to Hat Hill Saddle – which we reached by walking along part of Stage 1 of the Larapinta Trail (a multi-day long distance trail). At the start of this walk there was a small watering hole which was full of budgies and zebra finches.

For our final walk we went for about an hour along the Woodland Trail and then turned around – getting back to the car at about 5pm for the return drive to Alice Springs.

A week later we had a brief second visit to Simpsons Gap when our friend JH came to visit Alice Springs. We only had time to go to the gap itself – but JH brought us good luck as we saw our first ever Cockatiel in the wild.