What a spectacular place! We left Darwin and headed down to Mataranka where we turned off. We spent night one at Mount Price before passing through and checking out Roper Bar and then we spent two nights at Butterfly Falls. We swam in the waterhole and saw the beautiful butterflies.
The next day we did the drive to the Western Lost City. It's at the end of a 28-kilometer 4WD track that starts near the ranger station. You will need an access code, which changes weekly and is provided on a whiteboard at the ranger station, to unlock the gate.
Trailers and caravans are not recommended on the rough track and can be left at the rangers station. It is a pretty rough ‘farm track’ with water crossings, washouts, bull dust, sandy sections, and lots of really rough patches where it looks and feels like the water has come up in the wet season and not only left bumps and holes, but it looks like cattle may have traipsed through the mud which has then dried into even more rough stuff! It took us about 1 ½ hours to do the 28km in and about the same back. We spent about half an hour exploring the ‘Lost City’ when we arrived.
There is a track that winds through the formations and ends in a turning circle, right beside a ginormous arch! You can walk through and inside. I spent ages looking closely at them and could see wasps buzzing in and out and little fly ‘nests’ everywhere with flies coming and going. Some of the pillars sounded like they were buzzing!
This place is absolutely incredible and well worth the insane roads we had to go on to get there. Thank goodness we have an extremely capable offroad set up. It made the trip much more comfortable :)