After the solitude of the Great Central Road, Yulara was a shock. I’ve been reading on theme while in the NT and re-read Tracks by Robyn Davidson. She visited Uluru with her camels in the late 1970s and described:
… the ever-increasing number of Australia and overseas tourists, who not only had no knowledge of desert ecology and the effect their ery presence had on it, but who insisted on picking wildflowers, throwing cans out of their car windows, breaking trees for firewood, lighting fires where they had no business to, and then not dousing them out, and driving off the perfectly good road, leaving wheel ruts that would last for years.
Over forty years on, with the number of visitors, I completely understand why they have to corral all the campers into a caravan park. But it still was not a highlight of our camping experience.
So before another caravan park experience we needed a break at the Henbury meteorite craters. A tiny campsite next to a rocky ridge, and a set of small meteorite craters to walk around. And a campsite perfectly situated to see the rising full moon.
Then we were ready to face Kings Canyon Resort. But in fact it was nothing like Yulara, and we camped at the very edge, facing outwards towards the George Gill Range and its spectacular sunset display. And again, for two nights we were perfectly situated to watch the moon rise.
The walk around Kings Canyon was spectacular. It was again much hyped, and the number of walkers supported this. But we took our time, with a long pause halfway through, which seemed to let the rush hour pass us by.
The scale of Kings Canyon was just immense, and the sheer sided walls seemed unusual to the more jagged and rugged gorges we’d seen. And then on top of all this rock, as far as we could see, were these amazing rounded domes.
We followed the walk down into the Garden of Eden, to the lush green bottom of the gorge, where a small pool remained. The request was that we did not swim for cultural reasons, and this imperious, confident raven seemed to be there as guardian of that pool.
