I still think of the view growing larger as we climbed, and of the seat that allowed us to appreciate it at leisure. Beyond that climb were flowers, water, gum trees and a succession of turns that kept revealing more country. There was room to be impressed and room to be ridiculous, which suited our family rather well. The canyon could accommodate both without any assistance from us.
The Places We Found and the Things We Never Went Looking For
Kings Canyon makes you work for the view. On our return visit, Robyn and I took the climb in portions of ten or twenty metres, stopping often enough to give the surrounding country a very thorough inspection. There was a seat halfway up, and I can report that it was a useful piece of infrastructure. Whoever decided to put it there understood considerably more about our needs than whoever decided how many steps were required.
I recorded five hundred of them in my notes. I cannot claim to have conducted an independent audit, but from where we were standing, regularly, the figure seemed entirely credible. The consolation was that each pause offered more to look at, with the view opening further as we gained height. We had set out with some trepidation, and the canyon was steadily making its case for continuing.
This was our second visit, and the two experiences have settled beside one another in memory. The earlier one included our daughter Kirsten and a Lion King pose that has proved considerably more durable than many useful pieces of information I have tried to retain. Give a family an extraordinary landscape and there is always the possibility that someone will recognise its potential for a bit of nonsense. In our case, Kirsten supplied the reference that followed us out of the canyon and around the country.
Years later, at a lookout near Bundaberg, another suitably shaped rock presented itself. I tried to persuade Robyn to repeat the performance, but she declined to take up duties as Rafiki. Apparently my enthusiasm for the artistic possibilities did not constitute a compelling reason for her participation. I photographed the rock anyway and messaged Kirsten, suggesting we could put her into the picture afterwards.
There is progress for you. Once upon a time, a family had to assemble at the same place to produce a ridiculous photograph; now Dad could propose rearranging the family geography from a considerable distance. Whether the resulting image would have satisfied anyone’s standards of authenticity is another matter. Fortunately, the original silliness had already done its work, and the memory needed no technical improvement.
There is something pleasing about a place becoming part of the language of a family. A rock somewhere else can bring it back, along with the people who were there, without requiring the whole journey to be retold. Yet returning to Kings Canyon also gave Robyn and me an opportunity to look beyond what had already become familiar. We had memories to bring with us, but there was still a great deal of country to see.
On that return journey, in 2021, rain had changed the appearance of the Centre. We had come from Yulara through country alive with growth, passing camels and a dingo along the road. The green was striking in a landscape so often imagined almost entirely in red. Water had been through the floodways too, leaving deposits of mud that were becoming dust by the time we drove across them.
At the station where we stayed, the staff made us feel as though we were the only people requiring their attention. There was washing to do, work still following us around, and the usual negotiations with internet reception. We had enough connection to deal with business, although video was asking rather more of it. Travel in a caravan does not remove ordinary life; it relocates it somewhere more interesting.
There were distractions available, including a camel burger of a size worth recording. A buggy tour was unavailable because the vehicles were waiting for parts from Japan, an inconvenience that had apparently been continuing for some time. Even out here, with all that country around us, an activity could depend upon something sitting in a supply chain overseas. The canyon, fortunately, required no replacement components.
Before leaving for the walk, we washed the sheets and hung them out. They would have the day to dry while we dealt with our own increasingly ambitious domestic outing. At the canyon there was still a decision to make about which walk our bodies were prepared to undertake. We chose the rim, then began discovering what that choice involved. There is a brief and rather dangerous interval between agreeing that something looks worthwhile and discovering that your legs have not been consulted.
The climb rather concentrates your attention. For a while the immediate business is the next group of steps, the next stopping place and whether your legs have understood that this was supposed to be an enjoyable day. But even on the way up, the country keeps interrupting those calculations. Looking out becomes a reason to stop in its own right, which is convenient when you were already considering it.
Once we reached the top, the walking became easier for a time. The initial wall of effort gave way to a route that allowed us to move through the landscape and discover how much more there was beyond that first climb. A numbered marker indicated the way ahead, and another turn offered a view we had not had a few minutes earlier. There was no one else in sight along stretches of the track, giving us room to make our way at our own pace.
That freedom suited us. A view could have as long as it held our attention, and a rest could continue until moving again seemed reasonable. Nobody needed to make our performance look particularly accomplished. We were a husband and wife out walking, carrying all the ordinary strengths and shortcomings we had brought from home into a place of quite extraordinary proportions.
The grandeur of Kings Canyon is difficult to fit into a single view. Its walls provide the great declaration, but walking brings you among the smaller arrangements that make the whole place so compelling. There are rock surfaces to negotiate, gaps that reveal another part of the country, and formations whose relationship changes as you move around them. You begin by looking across something enormous, then spend the walk discovering that it contains far more than the first outlook could show.
Above Kings Creek, the canyon walls rise towards a plateau of rocky domes. That geography becomes much more than a description once your own legs have taken you up to it. Height has a physical meaning, and distance acquires the complication of what lies between here and there. A photograph can hold the outline, but it has difficulty accounting for the effort of reaching the place from which it was taken.
There were gum trees and flowers, and some of the gums appeared to have secured accommodation in decidedly precarious positions. Water occupied hollows where I had not expected to find it. After the rain, the life of the country was particularly difficult to overlook, even for someone whose attention occasionally returned to the condition of his knees. The rock dominated the scale of the view, while the plants and water kept drawing us closer.
A sign identified a meeting place. Those few words deserved space beside all the things competing for our attention, because they suggested a way of understanding where we were that went beyond the route around a scenic attraction. People had come together here for reasons that existed independently of our arrival with cameras. We were following a marked visitor track through somewhere that already held relationships, knowledge and obligations.
Looking into Watarrka’s published history afterwards gives those words greater depth. The Traditional Owners describe connections between neighbouring peoples, with gatherings for ceremony and other visits, including longer stays during drought. Water and shelter gave this country a practical importance alongside its cultural significance. The green we had noticed and the water in the rock were part of a much larger story than the welcome change they made to our photographs.
The Traditional Owners call themselves Anangu, and their account of Watarrka brings the land and its stories together. Tjukurpa connects the places, people and responsibilities of Country, with knowledge passed between generations. I can read that account and learn from it, but I cannot turn a walk around the rim into authority to explain everything it contains. The fact that I can see a rock formation does not mean I know its meaning.
That distinction matters when a place becomes famous. Kings Canyon is readily sold through its height, its views, its great walk and the prospect of returning with photographs that demonstrate all three. Those are understandable reasons to come, and we had come with cameras ourselves. The difficulty arises when the account of the place is reduced until the people to whom it belongs occupy only a small pause in the commentary.
I understand the appeal of a guide who makes a day enjoyable. People have paid to come away with an experience, and there is skill in helping strangers relax, take an interest and find something they will remember. A little humour can make a place more accessible. Having already contributed a Lion King memory to our family’s account of the canyon, I am in no position to demand that everyone else maintain a solemn expression.
But a family’s bit of nonsense makes a different claim upon the place from an explanation delivered as its history. Kirsten’s pose belongs to what we did there. It does not explain why the country matters to the people who belong to it. I want room for both, with enough care in the telling that the entertaining part does not quietly take over the authority of the other.
My concern with commercial guiding is what can fall away when the story must fit a timetable and satisfy the promise made in the booking. There are people to move, a group to keep together, transport to meet and another activity waiting further down the day. A recognisable name or a quick anecdote can be delivered efficiently, while the relationships that give a place its significance take longer to approach. I wonder how often visitors leave with the impression that they have heard the history when they have been given only the portion that fitted between stops.
I can imagine how the pressure works without claiming to know what was in any particular guide’s mind. A funny story earns a response immediately, while an explanation that requires attention may leave people looking towards the next photograph. The story that gets the response is tempting to keep. Repeat that selection often enough and the version easiest to sell can become the version most widely remembered.
It brings me towards that old observation about the winner writing the history. At a tourist destination, I find myself wondering who gets the microphone, who chooses the names on the map and whose account is repeated to the next busload. You need not erase a story deliberately to push it out of hearing. Sometimes it is enough to keep giving another story the better position in the programme.
There is a distinction, though, between knowledge being hurried past and knowledge being properly withheld. Some stories belong within customary responsibilities and are shared only in accordance with those responsibilities. A guide who explains that a story cannot be told may be offering a more faithful account than one who supplies an entertaining explanation for every feature. Paying for a tour does not purchase unrestricted access to someone else’s culture.
Nor does the Indigenous history end conveniently before the arrival of cattle stations and tourists. The Traditional Owners’ published account describes pastoral expansion reducing resources and displacing people, with families pushed away from their country. That history changes the way I understand a sheltered waterhole. Alongside its beauty is the knowledge that access to water and home could become difficult and dangerous for the people who belonged there.
These are things I have learned by reading more closely, rather than conversations I can claim to have had on the track. They make me wish the cultural account could have as much room in the experience as the physical achievement of completing the walk. It is possible to admire the canyon immensely and still come away knowing very little about the lives connected with it. I certainly had more to learn.
The Garden of Eden brings that question of how we describe a place into particular focus. The name is familiar and immediately supplies an image, while the descent takes you towards a rockhole and vegetation sheltered within the canyon. It is easy to understand why the setting holds a visitor’s attention. It is also worth considering how readily a name from one tradition can become the principal way visitors recognise a place within another people’s Country.
I use the name myself because it is the one by which I know that part of the walk. That is how thoroughly a familiar label can settle in, requiring no further explanation while older meanings remain beyond my knowledge. It is a small example of the power of telling a story repeatedly. Eventually the borrowed language feels like the natural description, and the visitor may never think to ask what preceded it.
For us, getting there involved boardwalks and stairs, followed by the necessary business of getting back up. Some sections appeared to have been designed by someone with a lively sense of humour. We would climb over a point only to go down again, sometimes by two steps, sometimes by four, with no immediately apparent advantage visible from the side. I am sure there were reasons, but our legs would have appreciated access to the design meeting.
My notes include the observation that pandas hate stairs. It seems a fair indication of the state of the commentary by that stage, when another flight could provoke a response disproportionate to the number of steps involved. Yet the stairs also let us move through parts of the canyon that would otherwise have required a very different undertaking. We could grumble about the engineering while continuing to benefit from it.
There is no requirement to become an improved version of yourself merely because the scenery is magnificent. You can be properly awed by a canyon and still harbour an unreasonable grievance against four additional steps. Indeed, the two experiences can occur almost simultaneously. It is one of the reassuring things about walking: however grand the setting, you are still obliged to take yourself along.
Water in that setting asks for attention. Around us was the great mass of rock through which we had been walking, and here was a place where plants could find shelter and moisture. It helped explain why the canyon held more life than an outsider’s simple picture of desert might allow. The grandeur remained, but there was pleasure in looking closely at what it protected.
The infrastructure had other messages too. Emergency locations and helicopter landing areas appeared around the track, practical arrangements that gave the walk a seriousness beyond our complaints about stairs. Someone had considered what would happen if a visitor could no longer continue. We were fortunate to be dealing with ordinary fatigue, with enough capacity left to keep following the route.
At the options for other walks, we stayed with the path we had chosen. There was no sudden burst of enthusiasm for enlarging the undertaking, and the junction with the Giles Track did little to alter that judgement. My response, preserved on video, was to suggest that the additional walk could be stuck in someone’s ear. It was not a considered assessment of the track’s qualities, and I would be disappointed if anyone used it as their principal source of visitor information. It was simply the judgement of a man who had acquired quite enough exercise for one day. There are times when knowing the limit of your ambition is a useful travelling skill.
About a kilometre from the end, a commemorative seat appeared. I appreciated the thought behind it and could have supported a considerably more extensive seating programme. By then we had passed a great many numbered signs, each of which confirmed progress without necessarily making the car park feel imminent. Passing number one hundred was an achievement, although apparently not the achievement of having finished.
A numbered sign is a modest object to generate such interest. Earlier in a walk it tells you where to go, while later it can become something close to a personal relationship. You greet the next one with considerable goodwill, then discover that it has brought you only as far as itself. The canyon continued to offer more, which was generous of it, although by then a glimpse of the Cruiser would also have been warmly received.
The track became more defined towards the end. Then Robyn saw the car park, and her pace increased in a way that suggested the destination had released reserves previously unavailable to the general walking programme. It brought to mind the welcome light at the end of C. J. Dennis’s Hist!, the promise of arrival drawing the weary traveller onwards. In our case, the welcome included seats with backs and a vehicle willing to undertake the next portion of the journey.
We drove to Kathleen Springs, where another walk presented itself for consideration. The decision was straightforward: our bodies had done enough for the day. We returned to take the washing off the line and rest, which seemed an entirely appropriate continuation of a day spent among such substantial rock formations. The sheets had completed their assignment without reporting any difficulty with stairs.
Back at the station, someone was camped under a tree in the grassed area, with a swag and a book. After our day’s exertions, there was something persuasive about the arrangement. We had chosen several hours of clambering through grandeur, and here was another traveller making a perfectly respectable experience out of shade and a place to read. There was room for both approaches, although I doubt the book required a helicopter landing area.
Looking back across both visits, I am glad that Kings Canyon has room in our family history for Kirsten’s pose as well as the long walk Robyn and I undertook on our return. A place becomes ours through odd combinations: an effort shared, something foolish enough to survive in family conversation, an unexpected patch of water, the sudden improvement in a wife’s pace when the car comes into view. Affection and humour give those memories their particular character. Another couple could follow the same markers and come home with a quite different collection.
That is part of the pleasure of it. The track can be marked, the stairs constructed and the route described, while the day remains available for whoever turns up to walk it. Our version includes tired legs and a daughter’s silliness because those things came with us. They give us a way into remembering the canyon, without making our memory its definitive account.
Tourism can help people remain on Country and share what they choose to share. In reading further, I came across Christine Breaden and Peter Abbott’s account of establishing Karrke near Watarrka, building a livelihood around cultural knowledge and its transmission to younger generations. We did not take that experience on these visits, so I cannot describe it as something we did. Their account does, however, offer a practical answer to the idea that earning an income and maintaining cultural depth must pull in opposite directions.
An enjoyable guided experience can open a door that a visitor might otherwise walk straight past. I would gladly pay for someone’s knowledge, for the work of making a day possible and for the chance to understand more than I could discover alone. The responsibility that comes with that transaction is to be clear about whose knowledge is being offered. An engaging delivery deserves an account strong enough to support it.
What troubles me is the possibility that the audience’s satisfaction becomes the final test of whether the story was properly told. We may enjoy a version precisely because it asks little of us, leaves our assumptions undisturbed and arrives at a cheerful conclusion in time for lunch. The parts that complicate the picture can be harder to accommodate. Those may be the very parts that stop an experience from becoming merely an attractive version of what we already wished to believe.
What matters to me is who has the authority to tell the story, what they choose to share and whether the visitor is given enough time to listen. The commercial arrangements should help that encounter happen, with Traditional Owners able to shape what is said about their own Country. Otherwise the familiar imbalance finds another means of continuing. The person holding the microphone gets to sound like the keeper of the history, and the people whose history it is may scarcely be heard.
I still think of the view growing larger as we climbed, and of the seat that allowed us to appreciate it at leisure. Beyond that climb were flowers, water, gum trees and a succession of turns that kept revealing more country. There was room to be impressed and room to be ridiculous, which suited our family rather well. The canyon could accommodate both without any assistance from us.
Kirsten’s Lion King pose remains part of our story, and Robyn’s refusal to provide a later edition has earned its place beside it. I would not surrender either memory in an effort to make our travelling sound more dignified. But somewhere along the rim was a sign telling us this was a meeting place, and beyond our own enjoyable account are people with much older stories, still being carried forward. I would like their voices to have room to travel home with us too.
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