The Ellery Creek Big Hole is good for a cool, but quick, dip. Photo / Greg Dixon Expand

The Ellery Creek Big Hole is good for a cool, but quick, dip. Photo / Greg Dixon

The very edge of the earth seemed on fire. Above a blank, black landscape and below a gently bluing night sky, the horizon burned, moving slowly from raw sienna to orange blush.

In the fading dark, we sat quietly among the rocks and ubiquitous spinifex grass, my fellow walkers and I, sipping cups of tea brewed by gas ring and torch light.

Dawn was near, and soon the sun would light an ancient landscape.

It was cold there, atop Mt Sonder, the primordial pile that dominates the western end of central Australia's most famous walking track, the Larapinta Trail. A chilly, but thankfully, gentle breeze moved among the rocks and turned the ends of noses cold. The sweat from the long hike to this spot had quickly vanished and I was glad of my four layers of clothing, my silly beanie and the offer of extra chocolate from our party's guides.

To get here, we not-so-hardy walkers had risen at 2.30 in the morning from our swags in a bush camp at Redbank Gorge, hidden in the darkness far below. We'd washed cold hands in freezing water and then slapped them together to warm them. We'd scoffed a quick breakfast of cold cereal, milk and yoghurt washed down with hot tea. We'd filled our daypacks with water and treats and then, in high, slightly nervous spirits, clambered aboard the World Expedition's Coaster mini bus at 3.15 sharp for the short drive to the start of the Mt Sonder track.

We knew what the cold and the dark were hiding. For a couple of days now, we - me and 14 lively, middle-aged Aussies - had had glimpses of it lying, like some sleeping three-humped camel, on the horizon. The day before, as we made for the last camp of our Larapinta trip, we had gotten so close to Sonder we could see why the local Aboriginal people, the Western Arrente, have always called it "the pregnant lady".

In the early hours of the following morning, we played follow-the-leader up the side of this reclined ancient female before moving along her legs, on to her distended belly and finally toward her head. Like a glowing caterpillar, we'd walked for close on four hours in single file with our headlamps tipped down so they just lit the rocky track that never seemed to stop going up.

For New Zealanders who have messed about in the mountains on the Mainland, Sonder's head - a touch under 1400m above sea level - isn't much more than you'd expect from a saddle climb, though it is among the Northern Territory's highest peaks. But in the dark, the 710m ascent to Sonder's top was a strange, almost incorporeal experience, a ghostly walk through an epic eternal silence above a vast, sleeping terrain.

The wait for dawn was a wait to see this concealed landscape come alive.

The red Centre, the Australians call it. But in the imagination it is more like the Big Nowhere, a flat, lifeless red thing that is closer to Mars than the third rock from the Sun.