Kings Canyon

Wednesday 13 July

After a couple of nights back at the Scout centre in Alice Springs, several showers and many loads of washing we said farewell to the Scout people and put Beth on a plane home. We're going to miss her. We bought our permit for the loop road, west of Alice and were on our way to Kings Canyon. The 200km of dirt road was in pretty good condition with only a bit of corrugation, but I kept checking the wing mirror to see if the camper trailer was still there.

 

 There's not much around Kings Canyon in the way of a town and we found ourselves camped at the "Resort". It seems that in the Territory if a caravan park has motel accommodation, some kind of restaurant/bar and a pool it can call itself a "Resort" but really it's just a caravan park.
We've seen some pretty spectacular scenery over the past couple of weeks. Trephina Gorge was amazing and then there was a whole other level with Ormiston Gorge. Kings Canyon turned out to be Trephina, Ormiston, Karijini and the Bungle Bungles all rolled into one! Towering red sandstone cliffs against the blue sky and once you walk up the track to the plateau and the ring walk you find yourself wandering amongst layered sandstone domes. But don't wonder too far off the track or you'll find yourself at the cliffs edge. The boys had a great time climbing and exploring, following the blue track arrows, finding ancient ripples in the rock. These rocks are much younger than the West Macdonald Range at 400 million years old and are thought to be ancient dunes and shallow lakes. During our walk I didn't see any signs of fossil.
Halfway around the loop the track decends down some steep wooden stairs into the "Garden of Eden" with rock figs, ghost gums and cycads along a creek with water in it, thanks to the recent rains. Further along this smaller part of the gorge it opens out into a large deep pool surrounded by rock walls. This reminded me of a pool at one end of Dale's Gorge in Karijini NP in WA. This place has it all. Back up on the rim the chilli wind kept us moving but the domes on this side of the gorge were not as spectacular.
The boys did very well walking the 7km around the top of the gorge followed by the Ranger walk along the creek in the afternoon.
All in bed by 8pm tonight.