From Uluru, we drove to Kings Canyon, another place we had heard much about. As we didn’t particularly feel like spending another small fortune for an unpowered site at Kings Canyon resort and campground, we instead camped at Jump up lookout. It was a pretty spot 25kms out, set up on a rock cliff face and overlooking the ridges that make Kings Canyon. The only downsides to the camp was the relentless dust, that left you feeling dirty no matter what and the tiny prickly weeds that seemed to cover a lot of the ground. On the way I spotted an eagle up in it’s nest not far from the road, so Jamie skidded to a stop and we watched it through the zoom of our camera as it fed a dead lizard to it’s fuzzy little white babies. Then the dad eagle swooped to the nest with another kill and the two parents set about feeding their young together. It was a spectacular display of nature that we were lucky enough to witness.
We started the rim walk at Kings Canyon fairly early the next morning, as it gets too hot in the middle of the day to be hiking. The start was a pretty hard, steep 100m ascent to get to the top of the rim. In my unfit state, I was huffing as we reached the top, whilst Jamie hadn’t even broken a sweat. Typical! The rest of the walk was over natural rock and meandered through differing landscapes that brought us to the edge of the rim where we received stunning views of the canyon below and the sheer cliff faces. True to our nature, Jamie and I explored as much as possible whilst trying to get photos of us on rock ledges overhanging the cliff faces. It was pretty tiring but an absolutely amazing hike. There were tracks that led off the main loop that went to lookouts and one called the Garden of Eden that was a beautiful tranquil part of the valley and finished at another sacred waterhole. When we finished the entire loop and had walked 9kms we were both pretty hot and tired, so we retired back to camp where Pumba had been waiting.
Jamie, who can never sit still went to track some birds in order to take pictures of them while I read my book. He came back with some great photos of a superb fairy wren a small bird that is bright blue and black.
The next morning we were woken at about 6:30am to something sneezing. In my half asleep state, I thought it could perhaps be Pumba in the tent below us even though it seemed too loud to be. I was too tired to really care, so went back to sleep, when Jamie said next to me “There’s a camel right by our tent”!! Well of course my head shot up and I looked out the mesh windows of our tent to see a camel just standing there about 5 metres away. It up and ran off right before we could get a picture, crashing through the scrub. That’s one way to wake up!
Our next stop was to the West Macdonnell ranges. We drove the corrugated dirt track called the Meerenie loop that is part of Aboriginal owned land. We saw some beautiful, dark wild horses along the way as well as some wild budgerigars that Jamie had wanted to see the whole time. We stopped at a lookout into Gosse Bluff which is a crater formed when a comet hit earth millions of years ago. It is another Aborginal sacred sight and they believe that the Milky Way women, who made up the stars had a baby that fell to the earth to create the crater that is now Tnorala (Gosse Bluff). We made camp in a wide, dry creek bed just before Roma Gorge. A half hour drive along the gum tree lined creek bed takes you to the Gorge. Just a short walk in and we were rewarded with another beautiful gorge, but this one had ancient petroglyphs, which are indigenous rock carvings. At the end is also a beautiful water hole surrounded by rock that is different to any other that we had seen. It really is a beautiful place, helped by the fact that hundreds of bright green budgies are flying around and chattering.
The next day we decided to explore Redbank Gorge, which was a short drive from our campsite. I didn’t have particularly high expectations as we had done a few gorges by now, but this one was completely different and absolute amazing. It was a 20-minute walk along a creek bed that still had water in some pools along the way. Jamie carried the surfboard, as he had read that there was water at the end that you could swim or float in through the gorge. So despite the fact that the water was quite cold and too murky to see the bottom, we braved the slippery rocks and got both of us lying on the one surfboard. The gorge here was made of a marble like rock that was smooth and made of many different swirling colors. We paddled through the canyon/gorge, some parts fairly narrow and some too shallow so that we had to walk over them to resume our paddling. It was an incredible experience to be paddling through the channel of a gorge. We reached one part that had two small dead birds as well as couple of dead fish. Not to be deterred by the slightly stagnant water we continued on until we found a section where you had to paddle into a cave underneath a boulder and then climb out the other side. The water and the gorge continued on as far as we could see but we decided to turn back, as we were both pretty cold from being in the water for so long. What we saw on the way back made both of us reconsider if we would swim in there again. One was a small snake about 15cm long which was possibly also dead, and the other even more terrifying thing was a water scorpion. We had only just learned about these aquatic bugs. They have hooked forelegs and a long tail and can both swim and fly. We had read that they cause intense pain in humans if they were to sting with their tail. With that, it was well and truly time to get out of there, so we paddled back to our bag where we met some other backpackers that we chatted with. Without meaning to we may have put them off swimming through the whole gorge and they settled for just swimming in the first pool instead. Regardless of all that, it was well worth doing and a really amazing spot.
