Kings Canyon

We arrived in the caravan park at Watarrka National Park last night to find that we followed 3 busloads of school kids from Uluru, to the Olgas and to here! In minutes the pool was packed with year 10 kids and people running around everywhere. Thank goodness they were gone when we rose this morning to get out to the Canyon.



Today we headed to Kings Canyon for another walk, another fantastic place.
The Canyon was first opened up to the public by Jack Cottriell and his son Jim. They spent the summers of 1960 and 1961 building a road and a tourist business at the Canyon until the lease run out on the land 30 years later and the land was given back to the aboriginals. They then proceded not to lease the land back to the Cottriell's so Jim went and bulldozed the whole lot down and moved to Stuarts Well where he can be found running a roadhouse called "Jim's Place". We stopped in there and spoke to Jim and had a look at his photo board he has there. He is a fascinating character.

The first bit of the walk was very steep as it took you up to the rim of the Canyon. Once up, the track follows the rim and back down again. Half way there is a track to the bottom to a place called the "Garden Of Eden", as you can imagine there is a water pool there and lush vegetation. Some of the rock walls in the Canyon have wonderful colours in them and are so sheer that it looks as though someone cut the wall with a knife.



The walk took around 3 hours and we enjoyed every minute of it. Great place!




We are leaving tomorrow and heading West where we will do the Mereenie Loop, is is a dirt track that will bring us out near Hermannsburg near the West Macdonnell Ranges. We can then choose to do some more gorges along the ranges or arrow straight into Alice, stock up food and fuel and decide where to go from there. It's still pretty wet up north and we are wary about that. Either way we will let you know!! :-).

Hope everyone is well, we are having a ball! Bye for now.