Finke Gorge National Park

Finke Gorge National Park sits 155 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs on Western Arrernte country, in the rugged country south of the West MacDonnell Ranges. The park is famous for one of the most distinctive plant communities in central Australia: the only natural population of the red cabbage palm (Livistona mariae), a tropical-style fan palm that grows in a sheltered valley deep inside the desert and is found nowhere else on earth.

The palms are a relict population from a much wetter climate around 65 million years ago, when the centre of Australia was covered in tropical rainforest. As the continent dried out, the palms survived only in this single deeply shaded gorge where year-round soakage from the Finke River keeps the soil moist enough for them to grow. About 12,000 individual palms remain. The Mpaara Walk, a 5 kilometre return loop, is the standard way to see them and the surrounding sandstone cliffs of the valley.

The Finke River itself, which flows through the park, is one of the oldest river systems on earth. Geologists estimate it has been flowing along approximately the same course for 350 million years, making it older than the dinosaurs and probably the oldest watercourse in the world. It flows aboveground only after heavy rain a few times a year, but a rich subsurface soakage supports the palms and the riverside vegetation continuously.

Access to the park is via the Hermannsburg Mission Road and then a 16 kilometre 4WD-only sandy track through the riverbed. A standard rental car will not get in. Most visitors come on guided day tours from Alice Springs by 4WD or join a longer 4WD adventure that combines Palm Valley with the Mereenie Loop and the West MacDonnells.

The park is best visited in the cooler months (April to October). Summer is dangerously hot and the soft-sand creek bed driving is much harder when the river is dry and unconsolidated. The historic Hermannsburg Mission, a Lutheran outpost from 1877 and the home of the famous Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira, sits just north of the park and is worth a stop on the way in or out.