Remote. Adventure. Bloody good scenery. To top it off it’s a must do if you visit Central Australia seeking to utilise your 4×4 in the manner it was created for.
The Finke River Route is fun, not too extreme and certainly do-able over 2 days. In fact its do-able as a day trip but an overnight camp surrounded by such spectacular Central Australian scenery is part of the experience.
On this occasion we did the track from South to North – the Finke River 4WD Route starts at Ernest Giles Road and finishes at Hermansburg (or visa versa), a distance of 70 odd km that will take 5.5 hours.
We did the track on a normal weekend. Of course, in our case there was a fair distance of bitumen bashing to get too and from either end from Alice Springs.
The signage on Ernest Giles Road (which is the dirt road short cut to Kings Canyon) suggests that you should travel in a group of at least two vehicles and carry epirb, sat phone and sufficient recovery gear. We went solo and at no stage even came close to needing any recovery gear. With a high clearance 4×4 and good tyres with reduced tyre pressure it is no problem. A few slow going rocky sections, a few deep sandy sections and quite a bit of easy pleasant driving.
The scenery all the way was really lovely. Through and over red sand dunes at the beginning and then zig zagging along the Finke River, between red gorge walls. It’s slow going but an enjoyable drive. On a few occasions the track meanders both ways and you seem to have a choice of directions but we never lost our way. All tracks follow the course of the Finke and just deviate for camp spots or to avoid chopped up or challenging sections of track.
So what were my highlights of the weekend? Driving through red sand dunes, detouring to Illamurta Springs Conservation Reserve, camping overnight at Running Waters which was so lovely for a swim and the reflections of glowing red rock in the water at Sunset. Boggy Hole was a really nice remote camping spot too but I think Running Waters was better camping for easier access to the waterhole and the ability to spread out more. We discovered Running Waters on Wiki Camps.
I would classify this as an iconic Central Australian 4WD experience not to be missed.
