Kings Canyon Resort – featuring Kings Canyon Cliffs – is another remote yet popular tourist attraction in Australia’s rugged north.
Watarrka National Park in the Northern Territory covers 71,000 hectares and is situated 215 kilometres west-south-west of Alice Springs. This scenic landscape is a refuge for many plants and animals, making the park an important conservation area and major tourist attraction within central Australia.
Watarrka is the home of the spectacular Kings Canyon, featuring ancient sandstone walls rising up 100 metres to a rocky plateau from the arid spinifex grasslands below. Ancient marine fossils etched into the rock show the geological changes that have taken place over time.
Several walks are rugged and testing, but well worthwhile – especially the Creek Walk of only about 1.5 kilometres that takes visitors through the Canyon to a lookout with views of the rocky Kings Canyon Cliffs.
The main four-hour Canyon Walk is hard going through the domes on top of Watarrka to the “Lost City” – scenery that resembles the ruins of a lost civilisation.