Kings Canyon

CanyonCliff Above Kings Canyon

Kings Canyon is a few hours away from Uluru and Alice Springs, like a hollow hill on the flat red desert.

Water It’s mainly rock and a few trees and bushes when you look from the outside. Red rock layered and broken like a live geology lesson.

Among all this red the sky reflected in a pool is strikingly blue. This hill contains a canyon, where rock seems to have been neatly sliced and has collapsed on the bottom.

Canyon bottom Inside the canyon

The bottom is a haven of humidity and plants, and consists of two parts.

The first is level with the desert, and a path winds between rocks, gum trees and spinifex grass balls which catch the light.

Garden of EdenGarden of Eden The garden of Eden

The second part is halfway up between the desert and the top of the hill, and is called the Garden of Eden. It is a closed place sheltering gum trees and cycads—“fossil” ferns which can live for more than a thousand years.

I’ve taken these shots from above, using the sky and rock reflected in the water as a background, which makes them look weird.

On one of them, you can see how gum trees can “kill” one of their branches (the black one) to consume less water during droughts.