King’s Canyon was fascinating. We had never before seen anything even closely resembling this place – great success! Unfortunately, my pictures don't quite catch the majestic aspect of this remarkable place. Let me first describe the surrounding area. We were now most definitely in The Red Centre of Oz. The sand was such a striking shade of brick red ad it made a lovely contrast with the various shades of green brush and tiny desert flowers. We were lucky in that it had recently rained, so there was much more color throughout the region.
King’s Canyon is in a larger park area covered by brush and
small trees, and is usually only visited by tourists as an after thought on
their way to or from Uluru. However, it was the main attraction for us! It was
scorchingly hot, but blissfully dry, and the hike up the canyon started with a
sharp decent that was only one degree away from being a scramble. Needless to
say, we guzzled most of our water on the way up. Luckily, the climb was
followed by an easy walk that wound its way around the canyon rim along a well-marked
path.
At first it seemed like a lovely, but somewhat common high
desert-looking, high desert area. But after a short while, we came to the
fascinating part – 30-foot tall beehive shaped rock formations made up of
layers of flat, circular slabs of rocks stacked in descending size order so the
result was like the steps of a pyramid, but in a circular shape. And they
stretched as far as the eye could see, just rocky lump after rocky lump in
every direction. The trail was great and wound us through and over the
formations – much less safe than you would find along a tourist attraction in
the US. They apparently don’t have an overpopulation of slip-and-fall lawyers
here. But that just made it feel more natural and less “beaten path,” even
though it most certainly is.
look for the tiny people in the above picture for an idea of scale
The rocks were shaped by an ancient ocean that used to stretch into the heart of what is today the Australian continent. You could even see where the sand had been shaped by small waves and then recorded through petrification.
We returned to a small area called Curtin Springs, which is
the only stop in between Uluru and King’s Canyon (about a 200km stretch). It
was an old cattle station turned into a caravan park and hotel/hostel. We
stayed in a private double that was hilarious. Unfortunately we didn’t take a
picture. There were two shipping container style buildings (corrugated metal
siding and all) that had four doors on each with a small walkway in between.
Inside the fourth door of one was our very humble, but more importantly, very
clean, abode for the evening.
Other than the hilarity of it, the only highlight occurred
while we ate dinner outside at a small plastic table. We began hearing the most
disturbing noises coming from the inky black abyss beyond the property. At
first, it sounded like some sort of weird yelping or howling. We had read that
dingoes can’t bark, so we thought maybe this was the noise they made. But then
it started sounding like a cow, but not an ordinary cow, perhaps one in labor?
Or a bull getting castrated in the middle of the night with a blunt knife? The
mooing sound would sometimes start sounding normal, but then it would crack
like a goose and go high-pitched! We began wondering if it was camels because
we knew there were wild camels in the area. But whatever it was, it sounded
like it was in great pain. As it turned out, this was probably just the normal
evening conversation of a herd of feral camels settling down for the night. So
bizarre.
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