Sunday 25 August: I’ve Been To The Desert On A Horse With No Name

 We revisited the Araluen Arts Centre to look inside The Museum Of Central Australia.

The Stockman was handcrafted by artists of Tapatjatjaka Arts Centre
 based on original artwork by Johnny Young

Yeperenye Grand Circle Sculpture

... Inside the sculpture

We also learnt that the complex creation of the MacDonnell Ranges, which line Larapinta Drive on the way to Hermannsburg, began about 430 million years ago and peaked about 315 million years ago, but continues to the present in the form of erosion and localised faulting.  The MacDonnell Ranges did not exist until about 320 million years.

And so we drove west from Alice Springs 100 kms to the Hermannsburg Historic Precinct, where Albert Namatjira was born and lived. 

The Hermannsburg Lutheran Mission was established in 1877 and was the initial point of contact between Western Arrarnta and European cultures. Its most famous leader Pastor Carl Strehlow under whom most of the surviving buildings were constructed in the late 1890s. The buildings were constructed using of a variety of construction techniques, largely based on those used in Germany, but utilising mainly local materials.

Household items including a coal iron between the kettles.

Albert Namatjira
Glass fibre cement sculpture by Lothar Brasse

It has been yet another great day and we are all pretty tired at the end of it.

And finally a little slide show of the Larapinta Drive accompanied by Paul Kelly's Black Cockatoo.