Blazing trail

In central Australia, the time is told in millennia. It is claimed the Finke River is the oldest waterway on Earth, with its headwaters in the West MacDonnell Ranges, one of the world's oldest mountain chains. Peaks have been worn down to stubs and deep gorges furrow the ranges like wrinkles. In this ancient landscape, only one thing is new: the Larapinta Trail, a 223km walking track across the worn backs of the ranges.

Completed in 2002 after 13 years of work, the Larapinta Trail is Australia's newest, and arguably finest, long-distance hiking path. It connects the West MacDonnells' most striking peak, Mount Sonder, to the outback city of Alice Springs. It's a trail that can be dashed across in 10 or 11 days, though it seems almost rude to hurry through a land so long in the making. With my walking companion, Mark, I set out to spend 16 days on the trail.

At a glance, completing this trek seems a task worthy of explorers, involving days spent walking across a desert as miserly with water as it is rough with rock. The names of landmarks, such as Rocky Cleft, Scorpion Pool and Windy Saddle, betray the nature of the terrain, and rivers flow only in rare times of flood. But the Larapinta Trail is an elongated oasis, built around world-class infrastructure that has all but quelled the harshest elements of Australia's red centre.

The trail is divided into 12 sections ranging in length from 13km to 31km. Each section can be walked in a day, though several are more comfortably divided into two. Water supplies are never more than 29km apart and camp sites no more than 20km. Food drops can be securely made at four points along the trail or buried in sandy creek beds. Even at the most casual pace, the Larapinta can be walked without carrying more than four or five days' food at a time.

We begin our walk on Mount Sonder, where a trio of wedge-tailed eagles, Australia's largest birds of prey, is circling the summit. As a current sucks the birds away west into the desert, we commence our own less graceful journey east.

Two days later we stride through the dry bed of the Finke River, crossing from range to range towards Glen Helen Gorge, where red cliffs arch so far it seems the range has simply snapped in two.