Arrived here on Sunday 2nd – what an amazing place. We went through the normal stuff on the way in - we have talked about it often burnt land on the way side interspersed with some amazing scenery. The road to Kings Canyon was closed for three days last week due to fires so we were lucky it was reopened.
The trip into Kings Canyon has been nothing but amazing, so far we have completed the Kathleen Springs walk and the Rim walk. The first was really quite tame and about 2.6 km return in fact it is described as follows:-
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| Kathleen Springs |
Kathleen Springs Walk – sealed track without markers
Distance; 2.6km return
Time ; Approx 1.5 hours (Obviously they used snails to judge this and they hadn’t meet Gill the super walker!)
Grade; Easy ( Well at least this was totally true its bloody flat the dickheads)
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| Info at Kathleen Springs |
This walk is recommended for families and visitors with limited mobility. (Suited Gill at least as she is getting old!) Signs along the track tell the story of centuries of Aboriginal culture and the more recent cattle industry. It leads to a delightful spring-fed waterhole at the head of Kathleen Gorge. This is a cool, moist place to sit (with the flies) and enjoy tranquillity. Now after the political blurb that is mentioned beforehand in this blog post, written by me, just take my word for it the place is bloody marvellous well worth the small walk.
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| Flies hitching a ride |
As for the flies, they are just so annoying. Gill walks along holding her ears to save them nesting in her ear lobes!
We did this walk on the way to our camp at the Kings Canyon Resort – you would think that with a name like Resort that it would just be fantastic. The price is $21 per adult which for a camping ground is on the upper end of the scale. This place has the best facilities of any camp that we have stayed in on our trip to date. The catch - they have the laziest (or untrained) cleaning staff that you have met ever. The facilities are dirty and even after they have been cleaned look like they need a clean. I went to the office and reported same on day one - how much was done about it absolutely nothing. I told you lazy staff.
Walk number two, Kings Canyon Rim Walk; (or what could otherwise be called Gill’s fall on arse walk in the rain – and yep you got it I didn’t have the camera ready again; dumb huh!
This walk can only be described as simply staggering as you climb, clamber and at times walk at a reasonable pace on a reasonable path through canyons. In fact for some stat’s
Kings Canyon Rim Walk – clockwise track marked with blue arrows
Distance: 6 km loop or to be precise 5.34kms as measured by my iPhone
Time: approx 3-4 hours, well that is unless you are doing it with Gill then 3hours 7 minutes and 59 seconds!
Grade: Moderate * with a hard section at the beginning of the walk.
And for the engineers out there ,as recorded on our iPhone, our fastest pace was 7.06kms, we ascended 220 meters and we descended 189 meters and we burned 372 calories – good news eh!
This walk begins with a steep, and I’m not kidding it is steep, climb to the top of the canyon then follows the Canyon rim around before descending back to the car park. About halfway around the walk there is an area that they called the Garden of Eden. This place has waterholes and small rivers with a stunning array of trees and vegetation. The photos cannot do justice to this area - the only way to really experience this area is to get off of your bum and go look!
Anyway speaking about getting off your bum we were about three quarters of the way around when God decided to empty his bathtub, we got soaked and to top it off during this intermission Gill fell flat on her bum as she descended a shelf sitting there in the rain – bit of a nuisance really as she then needed to be assisted to her feet again. Bugga me, isn’t that hard when she had a new fly repellent on that we were trialling - you know what, that stuff just makes you more slippery than a wet fish! You just try helping someone up with that stuff on - we must have looked like a couple of ding bats – half up and plop down she goes again, you know that happened about four times before we had lift off and all the time it was p—ing down. Soaked we finally achieved the mission – good news no damage done and she was able to continue on. We didn’t have to use spot or call for ranger assistance.
Words cannot do justice to this walk it is just mind blowing and would certainly rank up there with reaching the Cape.
Kathleen Springs
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| Info on the historic trapping yards |
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| The historic trapping yards |
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| Fencing at the trapping yards |
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| Opposite fencing at trapping yard |
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| Info on watering the stock |
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| Watering area Kathleen Springs |
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| Snake dreaming info |
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| Snake dreaming in rock |
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| Fly riding on arm - more flies hitching a ride |
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| Aboriginal story - Guardian of the Waterhole |
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| Kathleen Springs waterhole |
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| Waterhole at Kathleen Springs |
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| Fire damage Kathleen Springs |
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| We gave this walk a miss! |
The Rim Walk
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| Diverse Kings Canyon |
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| Info on Kings Canyon walks |
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| The steep walk up begins |
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| Commencing the Kings Canyon rim walk |
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| It was a steep walk up |
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| Rear view - great eh! |
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| Still going up |
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| The carpark far below |
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| Kings Canyon walk |
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See the sand - apparently the rocks slowly break down to sand.
The rock is very porous |
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| Kings Canyon walk |
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| Flowers on cliff face |
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| Another flower and this one grows upside down! |
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Gill just came through that lil bitty crack in the rocks -
shows just how much weight she has lost!! |
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| The intrepid leader shows the way - or is it I think its this way! |
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| More Kings Canyon info |
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| Don't jump! |
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| Cycads in Garden of Eden |
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| A bit more data |
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| Now isn't that different, a walk that goes through a tree |
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| Still walking |
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| Kings Canyon Waterhole |
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| Garden of Eden info |
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| Kings Canyon waterhole |
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| Kings Canyon walk |
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| Attaching the steps to the rock face |
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| Kings Canyon water hole |
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| Kings Canyon |
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| A natural rock formation after weathering |
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| Yep thats where we had walked from |
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| 3 kms completed, only 2.8 to go |
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We had been down there, thought about the boys and reckon
that they would have enjoyed this walk - mind you not too
sure if Tim would have had the energy just to keep going -
am I right Tim? |
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Gill trying to look cool when in reality she was
JUST ABOUT KNACKERED |
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| A bit more info - just in case you are still interested |
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| Cool rock face accompanied by idiots on the LH side |
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| Cycad |
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Nearing the end of the Kings Canyon walk - the photo above
is probably just Gill telling me to hurry up! |
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| Carpark in the distance a welcome sight |
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| One last look at the walk |
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And the last photo which by the way has nothing to do with
Kings Canyon apart from the fact that they were staying at the same
Campground as us - Travelling Australia by double decker bus, towing a trailer with a 4wd on it.
For some weird reason I could just imagine Sandra and Richard
doing this J |
I could imagine us doing it too!
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