{"id":546,"date":"2015-07-16T16:00:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T23:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/?p=546"},"modified":"2016-02-17T11:09:58","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T19:09:58","slug":"kings-canyon-and-miss-congeniality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trailheadproductions.com\/palette\/kings-canyon-and-miss-congeniality\/","title":{"rendered":"King’s Canyon and Miss Congeniality"},"content":{"rendered":"

I feel sorry for King\u2019s Canyon. Sitting all alone in the back of the Northern Territory of Australia. In the class rankings of Australian travel must-sees, it\u2019s never as popular as the Sydney Opera House, the Great Barrier Reef, or even the less visited but comparatively better known sites like Uluru and Kakadu National Park. King\u2019s Canyon is the Miss Congeniality of Australian travel. In the mix but\u2026 you know.<\/p>\n

A Miss Congeniality, though, with a wicked temper.<\/p>\n

\"King's<\/a>
King’s Canyon is an isolated spot, even for Australia, but well worth the trip.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You don\u2019t take the area lightly. Much like Uluru, where we had just wrapped production for that part of The Palette Project<\/a>, you have to really want to get there. Actually, you have to want to get there even more than you want to get to Uluru. King\u2019s Canyon is always described as being “between Uluru and Alice Springs,” which is kind of like saying Saturn is between Jupiter and Uranus. It is\u2026 but pack a lunch.<\/p>\n

Uluru, by comparison, is New York City. I mean, the place has its own airport,<\/em> and the Yulara complex about twelve miles away is the third largest permanently settled area in the Northern Territory. King\u2019s Canyon is 450 Kilometers (almost 300 miles) from Alice Springs\u2026 itself pretty remote\u2026 via the Lasseter Highway and the turnoff to Red Center Way. The route gets you to King\u2019s Canyon\u2026 and very little else. Sure there\u2019s a camel farm where you can sign up for\u00a0rides, but frankly\u2026 and I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m saying this\u2026 I\u2019ve seen better.<\/p>\n

What I can highly recommend is the roadhouse adjacent to said camel farm, about twenty kilometers south of the canyon. The coffee was good, the dogs on the porch were playful and the muffins were excellent. Really, this is all I ask out of a roadhouse along a forlorn two lane highway in the predawn hours of an outback morning.<\/p>\n

\"Road<\/a>
The one paved route to King’s Canyon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How forlorn? If you take the plunge and head to King\u2019s Canyon, take note of the cars by the side of the road. I use the word \u201ccar\u201d loosely because they\u2019r really just the shells of what used to be cars. Lord only knows how long ago they were left here after whatever accidents condemned them to lives of marker points for other travelers and brooding reminders of how not to behave if a road train comes your way. The dry desert air was keeping them from rusting in any serious fashion, but scavengers had long since stripped them of anything valuable as far as spare parts were concerned. Still,you should make a commitment to King\u2019s Canyon. It\u2019s worth your time.<\/p>\n

King\u2019s Canyon had been on my filmmaking radar for most of the past year. It was our go-to location if, for some reason, Uluru didn\u2019t pan out for production. For a while, it looked like this \u201cfor some reason\u201d may very well happen. Although rangers on the ground at Uluru were enthusiastic about our coming and showing what it was like for a visually impaired filmmaker to experience this sacred site, the powers that be in Canberra had a reputation of being something less than welcoming for film and media crews. Yes, they would gladly take our nonrefundable $500 permit application fee, but we had heard disconcerting stories from organizations as small as an Alice Springs production house and as large as the BBC and National Geographic about the capricious nature of the approval process, not to mention the numerous hoops we would have to jump through to get a permit. If we were traveling almost twelve thousand miles in search of the antipodean representation of Red, we were pretty intent on having a backup plan. King\u2019s Canyon, we felt, would do nicely.
\n King\u2019s Canyon is managed by the Parks and Wildlife Commission of the NT<\/a>, not Parks Australia<\/a>, and the permit process is a lot looser. Our one page permit application and a $45 fee was all it took to get approved in less than a week, and while I would never, never, even if you begged me encourage anyone else to do the following because it would be wrong, I will note for the record that on the day we were shooting at King\u2019s Canyon\/Watarrka NP, there were no rangers anywhere in sight, nobody ever asked us for our permit and the only people we saw the entire day were other hikers. So\u2026 ahem.. make of that what you will. Me? All I can say is that the folks at Parks and Wildlife were extraordinarily nice, friendly, helpful and if my $45 keeps them on the job, I\u2019m happy to pay it.<\/p>\n