'PUSSY CAT,' says Dr Charlie Carter, 'is considered a great delicacy by the Aborigines. Once they've caught one they just chuck it in the fire and cook it whole. They even believe it has mild medicinal properties - a bit like chicken soup.' It is early morning, the sun is high in a cloudless sky, and we are hiking through the remote and little-known MacDonnell Ranges, in central Australia. Since they were introduced by Europeans 200 years ago, feral cats - called by the Aborigines 'pussy cats' to distinguish them from the native cat, or quoll - have thrived, killing millions of birds and small mammals. For many conservationists they are public enemy No 1. A trained biologist, Carter is full of such surprising nuggets. With his salt-and-pepper beard, battered felt hat and a garnet stud in his left ear, he is the epitome of the Outback character. He knows how to catch a native rock rat (bait the trap with rolled oats and peanut butter - they find it irresistible). Or where to find a tasty witchetty grub (look for the tell-tale piles of sawdust the worms leave as they burrow into the lower limbs of a witchetty bush). All of which is divulged as he leads me and five other weary hikers along the 220kilometre Larapinta Trail through the West MacDonnells, which start from just outside Alice Springs, and run in broken, parallel lines just beneath the Tropic of Capricorn. First conceived in the 1980s, the trail's 12 sections have been laid out with the help of local Aborigines and prisoners from Alice Springs jail. While the trail can be hiked in its entirety already, taking about 18 days, it will officially be opened next March. The path is well marked and there are water tanks no more than a day's walk apart. Encompassing some of the most spectacular scenery in Australia's arid interior, it is likely to become one of the world's classic long-distance hiking trails. Abundant rains over the past two years mean the trail is bursting with life. The normally dun-coloured mountains are swathed in green, and wildlife is thriving. 'This is the best it's looked for 80 years,' Carter says. 'Nobody alive has seen it looking this lush before.' For much of our four-day exploration of the Larapinta we camp by the meandering Finke River, which is generally bone dry. Now, though, it has come alive and we lay our swags - a mattress, sleeping bag and canvas groundsheet all rolled into one - on a sandy beach beside a deep, reed-fringed waterhole, plunging into it after a hard day's walk in temperatures of up to 30 degrees Celsius. 'People have an image of central Australia as being like the Sahara - completely flat, hot and dusty, with Ayers Rock poking up in the middle,' Carter says. 'They think it's dry, dead and boring. They're astonished to see it has trees and shrubs and mountains.' The Larapinta Trail starts four kilometres north of Alice Springs, beside the waterhole that gave the town its name. The trail swings north then quickly west, heading into the folded hills of the 'West Macs'. The landscape has changed little since Aborigines first settled here around 30,000 years ago. In summer, the temperature can reach 45 degrees and during the midday heat only the buzz of flies breaks the silence. The Victorian explorer Charles Sturt complained it was so hot the ink in his pen dried before he could put it to paper. John McDouall Stuart, the first European to make it to what is now Alice Springs, wrote: 'I am now reduced to a perfect skeleton, a mere shadow...I can chew nothing, and all that I have been living on is a little beef tea, and a little boiled flour.' But we were hiking in September, and while it is certainly warm, there is a pleasant breeze blowing across the stony ridges we tramp along, and the nights are deliciously cool. Carter is one of the few tourist operators to offer guided walks along the Larapinta, and the emphasis is on stopping and learning about the landscape, rather than notching up the kilometres. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the local plants and animals. The brightly coloured beans of the batwing coral tree, he tells us, were used by Aborigines to make necklaces. What looks like a ragged pair of women's tights caught in a bush turns out to be the remains of a caterpillar nest. Aborigines can tell the difference between the European house mouse, which like the cat was introduced to Australia, and the almost identical sandy inland mouse, simply by sniffing them. He hacks open a cricket ball-sized 'bush coconut' - a gall that grows around a wasp's nest - and offers us the moist, faintly sweet flesh inside. We come across droppings left by a dingo and Carter gives them a robust poke with a stick. 'Looks like he's been eating mice.' He even knows the names of plants and animals in the local Aboriginal language, Arrernte. At the end of our second day we reach Simpsons Gap, a deep cleft in the West MacDonnells with an ice-cold, permanent waterhole frequented by rock wallabies and birds. An Australian kestrel patrols the ochre-red cliffs above and parakeets squabble in the magnificent Red River Gums which line the sandy creek. The MacDonnell Ranges are studded with gorges like this, offering a welcome respite from the heat. At night, back at the campsite beside the Finke, we drink plenty of red wine and eat a delicious kangaroo curry. The Milky Way arches overhead, the Southern Cross sits just above the horizon and we can even see Mars. As I burrow into my swag, a dingo howls in the distance. Day three takes us up Ormiston Creek and into Ormiston Pound, a vast natural fortress guarded by sheer walls of quartzite rock. From the outside it looks like a Crusader castle; from within it feels like a hidden world. A meandering creek, mostly dried up, leads through a cleft in the walls of the Pound and down through Ormiston Gorge. Twisted ghost gums - so white they look almost luminescent - grow from impossibly narrow cracks in the crumbling cliffs on either side. There are dingo pawprints in the sand and tracks left by perentie lizards, which can grow one metre long. Our final day begins with freshly brewed coffee and scrambled eggs around the campfire, fortifying us for the 16km, eight-hour return walk up Mount Sonder, at 1,380m the fourth highest mountain in central Australia. This is the last part of the Larapinta Trail and proves a fitting end to the trip. A tough climb through clumps of spiky spinifex grass and groves of shady corkwood trees takes us to the summit, from where there is an extraordinary view of the surrounding desert. To the west is the looming bulk of Mount Zeil, the highest point west of the Great Dividing Range. To the south a long ridge of rounded hills resembles a giant caterpillar. To the north is the shimmering expanse of the Napperby salt lakes. And to the east, stretches the full length of the West MacDonnells. This is a little known part of the world, but one that deserves a lot more attention. Charlie Carter runs Trek Larapinta and guided treks cost A$175 (about HK$680 per person per day, inclusive of all meals and transport). There is a 10 per cent discount for groups of four or more. Tel: 618 8953 2933, e-mail: charlie@treklarapinta.com.au , Web site: www.treklarapinta.com.au )
