On the Horn Expedition we had left the main track coming up from the south, and, after travelling westwards, crossed the Macdonnell Ranges and came in to Alice Springs from the north. As a general rule the track that follows the telegraph line is taken. Along this route, the Cretaceous plain ends abruptly at the foot of the Ooraminna Range, which rises somewhat abruptly, running east and west. In order to make a track, by which horses and camels can enter the Range, a rough kind of road has been blasted in the rocks at one particular spot, forming what is known as “the Pinch,” and it deserves its name much better than the photograph shows. In reality, it forms a kind of, more or less smooth, rock ladder up which the horses stumble as best they can (Fig. 87).

On one of our journeys, after successfully passing “the Pinch,” we followed the track for about eight miles, winding in and out amongst the rocky hills, and then turned back into the Ranges on the north side, so as to reach a rocky water-pool called by the natives Ooraminna (Fig. 88). The night before we had camped away from water and it was as much as we could do to unpack and unsaddle the horses, who evidently smelt the water, though we were camped at the entrance to a small rocky defile a quarter of a mile away from it.