Mt Augustus is in the region known as the Upper Gascoyne, about a thousand kms north of Perth and about 400 km inland from the coast at Carnarvon. This is the area in which the Gascoyne River rises.

The Gascoyne is WAs longest river, for much of the year though it is dry and only runs after heavy rain. It is called the ‘upside down river’ as its water flow is below the thick sand beds. It flows into the sea at Carnarvon, we will see it there in a few days. The river has numerous tributaries that criss cross the landscape. One of these is the Lyons River, also generally dry, which we cross on the way to Mt Augustus. Its floodplain is to the north west of Mt Augustus.

Mt Augustus is quite striking when it first appears on the horizon. It is big, in fact at about 860m above the plain it is about twice as high as Uluru and in area about 1.5 times bigger. It is 8 km long. It is also very old, much older than Uluru. The other noticeable difference is that it has lots of vegetation, unlike Uluru.

Uluru and Mt Augustus are both known as inselbergs, or single mountains rising above flat plains.

Uluru is Australia’s biggest ‘rock’ inselberg. It is a single rock ‘stranded’ in among the surrounding strata. Totally different to Mt Augustus. Mt Augustus is what is known as a monocline, it’s not a ‘rock’ like Uluru. It has an underlying granite base that was covered by millions of years of sandstone deposits. The whole structure was ultimately buckled and folded into an arch. The sandstone has been eroded away leaving today’s big ‘rock’, Mt Augustus. The granite is partly exposed in some places on the mountain, but the last ‘layers’ of sandstone are still there.

Sorry, to tire my readers with a bit of very rough geology. Allthego finds this stuff interesting, Homealone is not stimulated at all by it and sympathises with readers of the same ilk!

The local indigenous people have a traditional dreamtime approach to explaining Mt Augustus. They know the mountain as Burringurrah.

It is a short story about a boy, Burringurrah, under going initiation into manhood. He got stressed about this and ran away, so breaking the law. He was pursued and speared in the right leg as punishment. He fell to the ground and the spear broke leaving the stump in his leg. He was then severely beaten and died, lying on his belly with his left leg (circled in white below) bent up beside his body, right leg stretched out. Head circled in yellow. He turned to stone.

This is a photo of the mountain showing all this for you to see, a little imagination is required.

Now Allthego spent quite a bit of time trying to see all this, but got a bit lost in the detail. The photo has the spear stump circled (very small and hard to see) in black, it is now a lookout. Homealone, was less concerned in detecting this detail.

We did three short walks up the slopes of the mountain to check out some petroglyphs and generally take in the mountains presence. Allthego didn’t venture to the summit, a full days walk there and back and apparently strenuous in parts.

An interesting spot was the Cattle Pool, a deep waterhole on the otherwise dry Lyons River. Plenty of birdlife here, especially Corellas.

Mt Augustus is the sort of place where you can do a lot or little. Just sitting in the van park taking in the mountain is special. Its colours change as the sun moves across the sky.

We had four nights here before packing up and heading, another day along the dusty gravel roads, to the small town of Gascoyne Junction.