Experience the best of Kings Canyon

Kings Canyon lies in Watarrka National Park, in the red centre of the Northern Territory, among the rocky ridges of the George Gill Range. Its sandstone walls drop about a hundred metres to the creek bed, and the country around them is red sand, spinifex and scattered desert oaks. Uluru and Alice Springs are each a long drive away.

The Rim Walk circles the top of the canyon, passing the Lost City, a field of domed rock formations, and dropping down to the Garden of Eden, a shaded waterhole fringed with ferns and cycads. A gentler path follows the creek along the canyon floor between the cliffs. The land is Aboriginal country, and the canyon is part of a much larger landscape of ranges and dry gorges.

Bush foods such as wattleseed and bush tomato turn up on menus across the red centre, alongside steak and damper. The air is dry and the skies clear, and the canyon walls glow deep red at sunrise and sunset, while winter nights can fall below freezing.