My travels

Watarrka National Park

Watarrka National Park, named after the Luritja word for Umbrella Bush, is the home of Kings Canyon, with its Lost City and Garden of Eden.

The area was hidden from Europeans until the 1960s when the first road was built. Now there are sealed roads from Uluru (307 km) and Alice Springs (331 km). There was a cattle station nearby from the 1880s, which gave up land in the 1980s to form the National Park.

The park has dramatic and unusual rock forms, moist gullies and permanent waterholes. It is situated on the intersection of three major landforms: MacDonnell Ranges, Simpson Desert and the sand plains of Lake Amadeus and the western deserts.

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