Day 9,10,11 - Kings Canyon

Off to Kings Canyon today and we stopped in at Kings Creek Station for lunch along the way. This is a working cattle station that covers an area of 1,800 square kilometres. They also have camels and do rides with them. The cafe was very expensive and is was $24 for a hamburger so mum hopped into the van and whipped up some tasty wraps.

The Camels at Kings Creek Station

Kings Creek Station

We arrived at our caravan park and set up and the toilets had special gates on them that you had to close them all the time because of dingos that sometime roam around the park. The next day we got up early to do the Rim walk which is about 6km that goes around the top of Kings Canyon. It is a beautiful walk and you start by climbing up a 100 metre steep cliff face and then walk around the rim of the canyon's sandstone walls. The views are amazing and you can see for miles and it felt like we were going to fall if you got too close to the edge. I felt tiny when we were looking down the cliff faces and the colours were awesome. We saw some guys that were standing right on the edge of the cliff and their girlfriends were asking them to pleeeeeease come back away from the edge. Dad went the nearest to the edge of all of us and i was glad when he got back from it because it looked like if he fell we would never see him again.

It's a long way down

Nearly at the Top

We also saw a beautiful oasis down in the bottom the canyon. It was 270 metres down into the chasm between the sandstone cliffs. It was called the Garden of Eden. It is a natural spring waterhole that has lots of enormous prehistoric ferns. I felt like diving into the water to cool off but there were signs telling us that it was a sacred place for the aboriginals and to please not swim in there as it would pollute the water and affect the environment.

On top of the World

It was very hot and i was pleased when we only had a kilometre to go. Charlotte was out in front again, because she is like a mountain goat and when we came around a corner she was laying on the ground. Mum ran up to her and she looked up and said, "you have lost one, i cant go any further!".  It was quite a hard walk because there was lots of up and down stepping and you had to watch where you put your foot everytime because it was very rocky.


The next day we did the Creek Bed Walk which is a 2 kilometer walk through the rocky creek bed at the bottom of the canyon. It ends up to an area that you can look up at the canyon rim and we could see people walking around the very top where we walked yesterday.

They looked like ants because they were so small and the cliff faces were soooooo high up. It was a much easier and more relaxing walk and it was lovely and cool because we were in the shade most of the time. I couldnt believe how many rocks were in the creek bed.

Kings Canyon Creek Walk

Indy and the Girls

I can't keep holding this rock up much longer

We went back to our caravan park and i met a girl called Adele and her brother George. They are from Tasmania and are travelling around Australia for five months. She is 11 and George is 9 so now we both have a friend to play with. We went and played tennis with Adele and then her mum, Rowena came and met mum. Charlotte lost a tooth and she set a trap for the tooth fairy because this is what she does everytime. She wants to catch the tooth fairy so she can see what she looks like. Last time she taped her tooth the the palm of her hand with sticky tape and went to sleep but the tooth fairy was too good and managed to get thru all that tape and collect the tooth off her. This time she left some food ( bread crumbs) under a cup and had her torch shinning on to it so she could see her....................but she was so tired from all our walks that she fell off to sleep. She was disappointed when she woke up in the morning because she missed her again but she was so happy because the tooth fairy left her $5. In Mt. Martha the most she has ever got was $2 or $3 for her front teeth but mum and dad said that it was probably because it was "Territory Day" and the fairy was celebrating it too. That night there were lots of fireworks going off and all the people at the caravan park were out looking up at the sky. They were soooo loud and went for ages. In the Northern Territory anyone can buy fireworks but it is illegal in every other state of Australia. You need a special license to buy them and set them off. There were signs everywhere selling fireworks and i think everyone around Kings Canyon must have bought them because the sky was full of fireworks. We also had a camel burger here at the resturant and dad and mum had beef burger. The camel burger was delicous and it tasted a bit like beef but a stronger taste. Sarah Hansen told us that it was very expensive to buy anything at Kings Canyon and she was right.............the coco pops were $10 for a small pack and they also sold Kangaroo Tails and they were only $6 but I didnt really want to eat those because I thought that they would be too tough.  We hoped into bed and were very excited because the next day we were off to Alice Springs and our friend Francis is flying up to stay with us.