REGAL SPLENDOUR
Kings Canyon boasts majestic landscapes, a rich tapestry of traditions and, now, a touch of glam.
ALIGHTING A PLANE AT ULURU is the ultimate full stop for most people on a journey to the Red Centre. But I have had the privilege of seeing the Rock a few times in my life; today my imagination is being stirred by another form on the landscape some 300 kilometres away. Rather than being a full stop, this is just a pit stop.
The next leg of my journey to Kings Canyon, a cavernous gouge in the ancient red earth, involves a 45-minute light-plane journey over the relentlessly flat, dry landscape, given texture by sandy scrub and dark green bushes that look like freckles from this height. Visual distraction is provided by the otherworldly visage of Lake Amadeus, which stretches so far (it is 180 kilometres long and 10 kilometres wide) that it disappears from view in a soft haze before you can see its actual edge; the salt lake’s sun-bleached greys and blues stand in stark contrast to its surroundings.
After landing onto a red-dirt airstrip at Kings Creek, the last leg of the trip involves a quick 40-kilometre drive to Kings Canyon Resort; the vast outback distances quickly recalibrate your definition of what is close and what isn’t.
Located pretty much halfway between Alice Springs and Uluru, within the 1050-square-kilometre Watarrka National Park, Kings Canyon has long been a lure for nomads doing the drive from one to the other, a place to pause for a day or two to rest up and explore the canyon’s expanses.
Up until relatively recently this has been done either at Kings Canyon Resort’s sizeable camping ground or in one of its hotel or dorm-style rooms. But I am destined to experience it within the altogether more salubrious surrounds of its newly installed glamping site. Made up of
The vast outback distances quickly recalibrate your definition of what is close and what isn’t.
six canvas safari-style tents, the interior proportions (there’s a cosy living room area and a full-size table and chairs as well as a king bed and en suite bathroom complete with shower) are generous and the inclusions luxurious.
INTO THE NIGHT
One of the highlights of Kings Canyon Resort’s exclusive proximity to the canyon itself is the views it affords of it. As my long day of travel starts to melt into dusk, I follow many of the temporary inhabitants of the resort as they undertake a slow and jovial procession to an ample deck sitting in the sand and scrub. Some come with drinks in hand (procured pre-pilgrimage at the evocatively named Thirsty Dingo Bar) or there is a makeshift bar on-site to cater to the desire for a sundowner. Once there, we wait patiently for the sun to slowly descend from the sky in order to witness the colours and shadows it bestows on the rocky outcrop in the distance.
Once the warmth has been wrung from the day it is replaced by an increasingly inky black sheet, which will now form the canopy for my dinner. The ‘Under the Moon’ degustation dinner is an outdoor affair of flavoursome dishes from executive chef Jonty De Camargo using the best local produce, including native ingredients.
By the time I reach the last course the hours of travel are tugging at my consciousness. The walk back to my tent is done by torchlight, tramping through the sandy earth that still holds the warmth of the day even as the night air cools my face. Sleep comes easily back in the softly lit interiors, all zipped up for the night.
I wake some time later, not knowing if I have been out for hours or minutes, to the sound of howling in the distance. Kings Canyon’s resident dingoes are apparently not suffering traveller’s fatigue and spend the next few hours talking to each other (or maybe to the moon) in their own unique chorus. I try to keep my eyes open, so enthralled am I by the experience, but I eventually succumb to the comfort of my king bed. After that, the dingoes could be dancing the cancan across my outdoor deck and I wouldn’t know it.
WALK OF AGES
In spite of the previous night’s unscheduled entertainment, I am up the next morning and ready to leave before the sun is: it is Rim Walk day. The six-kilometre Rim Walk skirts the edge of the vertiginous walls of the canyon, which rise some 270 metres above sea level. The canyon was formed more than 400 million years ago, standing silent and alone for most of that time. I wonder, as I approach it, what it has seen come and go during that time, but the figure is so mind-blowing that I have trouble imagining that much history meted out in years. Let alone days.
The three-hour trek starts with a 500-step climb from the carpark below to the rim of the canyon that knocks the wind out of me at a few points (the walk can be steep in parts so a certain degree of fitness is needed). But there’s a silver lining in pausing to catch your breath every so often as it affords amazing views back over the landscape of Watarrka National Park and seemingly endless skies that hover above
Pausing to catch my breath affords amazing views over the landscape and the skies that hover above it as they are washed with the gentle pink of sunrise.
it as they are washed with the gentle pink blush of sunrise. The walk traverses scrubby plateaus and solid red rock. We weave our way down into the verdant oasis of the Garden of Eden, which cuts a green swathe through ochre walls. The waterholes here are a permanent fixture that offer respite from the increasing heat of the day. We encounter some of the abundant wildlife that calls the canyon and its surrounds home at various points on the walk; a sweet little bird perches on a nearby rock unfazed by our group trooping past it. The sense of remove that the walk bestows from my day-to-day existence, surrounded by nothing but nature with nothing to blight its exquisite beauty, comes to an end when we pass a frantic tourist heading back up the track in search of his girlfriend’s mobile phone. With no reception available to provide a ringtone clue as to its whereabouts and too many deep crevices in the sandstone edifice for it to hide in, it’s as good as gone. Maybe they can spin it into a funny travel anecdote when they get home.
RAISE YOUR VOICE
After a bite to eat back at the resort, it’s time to head out again, this time to the nearby Karrke Aboriginal Cultural Experience. Owned and operated by Christine Breaden and Peter Abbott, members of the local Wanmarra Aboriginal Community, and assisted by Peter’s bubbly, smiling sister Natasha, tours here are designed to share and preserve their Luritja and Pertame languages and culture. The trio are generous hosts, offering up fascinating insights into everything from their art to cultural practices. We follow Peter from one spot to the next, hearing about unique weapons – the boomerangs in this part of Central Australia are not the returning type apparently – and medicinal plants that have been used for millennia. There’s also the chance to sample that most wiggly of bush tucker, the witchetty grub. Christine shows how the plump, juicy grubs are plucked from the roots of the witchetty bush (Acacia kempeana) and Peter cooks one by tossing it in hot coals. Once done, he divvies up the piping hot grub and hands it around to a chorus of ‘palya’, which we learnt earlier means ‘thank you’ (as well as nice and/or wonderful). I can’t help but feel that combining the Rim Walk with the Karrke Aboriginal Culture Tour (as Kings Canyon Resort does on its Uluru to Kings Canyon Overnight Delight package) is an inspired move. Not only does it share the wisdom and knowledge of Peter and Christine, hopefully safeguarding it for the future, it also makes me appreciate my presence at Kings Canyon even more. To see the dramatic beauty of the land and then meet the people who have called it home for so long is humbling, and yet again confirms how essential embracing and respecting the past is to creating a positive tomorrow for our country.
THE FAREWELL
The dingoes provide a fitting farewell to me on my last night under canvas, again filling the night with chatter. The next day I snatch a last look at Kings Canyon in the distance as I head back to Uluru (or the airport at Yulara to be precise). I forgo the light plane transfer in favour of hitting the road, affording me the chance to see the expansive distance I travelled to get here at much closer quarters. While the landscape outside the window stays largely uniform for much of the journey, I can’t bring myself to look away. It is almost hypnotic watching the low scrub flash by at ground level; looking to the horizon adjusts the perception of speed so that it seems like we are moving in slow motion. I like this outlook because it allows me to fool myself into thinking that I can stay out here a little longer. There is time for one final pit stop: to stand on the edge of Lake Amadeus. What seemed vast from the sky is rendered limitless on the ground. Its grey expanse stretches forever as I pause there enjoying the silence and serenity it radiates. My journey to and from Kings Canyon has been long in terms of distance but my ‘me time’ here represents a millisecond in the life span of the land itself. All the more reason to appreciate all we have been left. And that turns out to be the ultimate full stop of my journey.
FOOL’S GOLD
The 306-kilometre, four-hour drive from Kings Canyon to Yulara is one of the great outback road journeys, a lot of it under taken on the famous Lasseter Highway. The passing vista is flat and wide open, scattered with a low scrub of sun-bleached taupe and khaki grasses and squat green bushes that have learnt how to survive the often hostile outback elements through a triumph of evolution and adaptation. And there’s always the rich red dirt that fills any space that the vegetation hasn’t managed to claim as its own.
The road trip is punctuated by interesting sights to linger over, Mount Conner (also known as Atilla and Arttila) being the most dramatic – and quizzical.
As the hulking monolith appears on the horizon, its form and size are vaguely reminiscent of that other giant rock that so captures the collective imagination.
Situated on land that makes up part of the mammoth 416,410-hectare Curtin Springs Cattle Station (which was nearly called Stalin Springs after Abraham Andrews took up the leasehold in the 1940s and determined to name it after the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin; his son objected so it was named in honour of the then prime minister, John Curtin, instead), owned by the Severin family, the giant inselberg (an isolated hill or mountain rising abruptly from the landscape, just like Uluru) is actually shaped like a horseshoe and is made up of a sandstone slab sitting atop walls of sand and rock. At 859 metres above sea level, it is just four metres shy of Uluru’s total.
These ‘same but different’ similarities have led many a passing driver to mistake Mount Conner for Uluru, which sits just 100 kilometres down the road, resulting in it being bestowed with the comical nickname of Fool-uru. It’s also made it an attraction in its own right.
There’s a viewing platform by the side of the road where you can get a better look at it across the landscape; an easy climb up a sandy slope delivers you to the edge of the Lake Amadeus salt lake for another expansive outback view.