2 Texans Down Under

Imagine that you’ve been transported a century or more back in time and that you are riding a horse or walking or you’re leading a camel across rocky and arid plains in the Australian outback.

Summer or winter, you’d probably be thirsty or at least worried about how to replenish your water supplies in time to save your own life and that of your horse or camel.

Now imagine that you peer over the edge of a wide crack in the red ground and look down onto the tops of healthy trees growing alongside a small stream that ends in a pool of clear fresh water.

As you celebrated, you might well think you’d stumbled upon a Garden of Eden, and that is the name modern-day folks have given to a small, lush canyon which is part of the Watarrka National Park or Kings Canyon between Uluru and Alice Springs in the Northern Territories.

Even for day hikers like me and Kristi, with plenty of water and a Toyota waiting for us in the car park, the Garden of Eden was a refreshing and invigorating sight after a couple of hours of walking up, down, and over dry red rock and scrubby plains.

It isn’t the most spectacular sight or the deepest part of the complex of canyons that constitute Kings Canyon by any means, but it fascinates the eye and the mind because it is so oddly out of place.

Gum trees, cycads, and ferns grow along the bottom of this narrow canyon which is said to harbor a remnant of a tropical rain forest which once was spread out over this now-dry land.

The park service has provided sturdy stairways into and out of the Garden of Eden, so it is easy for hikers to get down to the calm coolness of the pool.

Getting down from the top would not have been so easy for the Aboriginals who must have gathered here or for any European explorers who chanced upon its beauty. In the summertime especially, it must have been hard to contemplate climbing  out to continue one’s trip across the dry, hot plains.

We stayed at the bottom of the Garden of Eden, however, only a half hour or so.  We were drawn on by the chance to see the 270-meter  (886 foot) sheer cliff face visible from the trail farther along the main canyon’s rim.  And our car.  And our hotel room.  And food.

Our four-hour hike around Kings Canyon would have been well worth our effort on the cool winter day of our visit without the Garden of Eden, but it was a welcome bit of green in the pervasive red.

Just thinking about it, now, makes me feel good.  Visit it if you can.