Kings Canyon: Lost in Time.

A few years ago, I went to the Northern Territory of Australia, and did a tour through the Aussie Outback. You can read more about this tour I did here. Given my love of hiking, and my recent love of travel, I thought it would be wrong to not write about this awesome place I visited.

About Kings Canyon.

Kings Canyon is a sandstone canyon (duh), located about 300-km southwest of Alice Springs in Australia – that’s another way of saying it’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s an amazing rocky, desolate environment out there in the desert. When you walk there, you feel like you’ve been transported to a time long before humans existed, or perhaps another planet.

From memory, there were two main walks you could do there. We could choose the easy walk, which is about 30-minutes each way, and traces the bottom of the canyon. Or we could choose the rim walk, which involved walking up the canyon and walking around, which would take around 3-4 hours. Of course I wanted to walk up the canyon, so that’s what I did. There is a third, much longer walk you can do, called the Giles Track, but we didn’t have time for that. Also, I’m not sure I was prepared to hike 22-km in the desert, so there’s that.

The Rim Walk.

Going up Heart Attack Hill.

The Rim Walk first involved walking up a steep hill, which was called ‘Heart Attack Hill’. I could understand why. It was steep, and it was very hot outside (we walked in the afternoon for some reason). Once we made it up that part, about 45 minutes later, our guide said that we could turn back at this point and go back to the bus if we wanted to. In retrospect, it didn’t seem necessary. If you could make it up this part, you could easily do the rest of this walk, which was pretty flat. The issue here is the heat though, you’ll need to take around 1 litre of water for every hour that you walk (which is 3-4 hours total).

Once at the top, I could see the surrounding landscape, and the other side of the canyon. Much of the track then follows the canyon edge, which is u-shaped, before going downwards again. Some interesting features to note about this place is how desolate and barren looking it is. But also, at one point, you saw these amazing sandstone domes. Finally, at certain parts of the walk, if you yelled at the opposite end of the canyon, your voice will echo back to you a couple seconds later. Pretty neat huh? OK enough of me talking, time to put some more pictures in.

The many sandstone domes we saw at Kings Canyon.

Kings Creek Station.

I can’t mention this walk without mentioning the campsite we stayed at. After doing our walk, we stayed the night at Kings Creek Station nearby, oh and we slept under the stars too. I can’t tell you how clear the skies were, being in the outback far away from civilization and light pollution, but I saw more stars than I had ever seen in my life. If you have a camera which can do good night photography, this is the place to do it. We had a few drinks, told stories by a campfire, and then went to bed.

We slept in what you’d call ‘Aussie Swag’. Basically, you’re inside a sleeping bag which is inside this other bag, which is meant to keep insects out. Just before going to bed, I went to use the bathroom and saw several insects come out to play, now I was worried they were going to sleep with us. So it took me a little longer than usual to sleep that night, but none of them bothered us, that I knew of!

‘Aussie Swag’ which I slept in that night.

People on my tour setting up their beds for the night.

Campfire stories.

In Summary.

If you’re travelling through the Northern Territory of Australia, don’t pass up the opportunity to see King’s Canyon and stay at Kings Creek Station. Warning cliché incoming: The views and experiences you will have there are out of this world.