Sunday morning seven weeks ago, we wanted to head off at 6 o’clock, in order to start hiking the cliff walk at Kings Canyon. Somehow my smartphone had the Adelaide time zone all the time, which was fine until now as South Australia and the NT shared the same time zone…but now it’s the first Sunday in October and daylight saving starts. So actually the alarm clock didn’t ring at 5:15, but even an hour earlier. I just realised that, when I was out of the car and looked for the time on my watch. Well, in the end I decided to sleep again for one hour, but as you can imagine it’s hard to get back into sleep. Anyway I got out of the car, prepared my breakfast in order to get ready, and even prepared the car afterwards so we can head off, but Meg still preferred to stay on the mattress. Well the walk closes at 11 o’clock, or even earlier, if it gets too hot. So it’s definitely a good idea to be early. After 6 o’clock, the car was already ready, the water already on the top, Meg blamed me that I didn’t wake her up earlier, and that she needs now water. I explained her that she had time to refill her bottles the whole evening, but she preferred to watch Netflix (higher priority than gettting water), as every evening. And as we agreed before to start at 6 o’clock, I’m not a baby sitter for adults to wake them up again. Probably you want to experience what happens, if you’re a few minutes late to your mountain guide from South tyrol…not a good idea at all. He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing…When we finally arrived at Kings Canyon, after having a great arguing in the car before, the parking area was already full and we were definitely not too late. In the end we decided to walk separately, so everyone can have their own speed.
The Kings Canyon is not very large, but it’s definitely very deep. And especially due to the vertical over even slightly overhanging high walls, it’s an impressive view. The walk is not that difficult, you just need to make 100m altitude, and everything is well prepared, as always in an Australian national park. The rocks around Kings Canyon (which was actually named after a bloke with his surname being King) compose of three different kinds, two(?) of them are different kinds of sandstone. The top formation got eroded by water, and once these squares are now getting to smooth domes. The morning light made different colours to the rocks, as well as the different points of view. In between the rocks there some deep gorges, which still hold water in some billabongs. As this as sacre site from the Aboriginals, they ask not to swim into the water. Having a sip or washing the face is still ok. After less than 3 hours I finished the walk. Then we drove back to the Kings Canyon resort, because I needed to pump up the tyres from the unsealed roads, as the next days everything is sealed, well and Meg was looking for a 6$ coffee, as the instant coffee we have in the car doesn’t suit her standards. At Kathleen Springs we had a short walk and afterwards some lunch, where we also met Caim and his mother and a friend of her. We had a nice conversation with them, and he gave us some travel advices. In the afternoon we drove along the sealed road almost to Yulara, where we had a nice sunset view to the Uluru and the Kata Tjuta.
