I’ve visited Australia’s Red Centre several times in the last thirty years yet each time I return the colours still surprise and delight me – ancient ochre rock, subtle shades of green across hardy desert plants, chalky white ghost gum stripes, all against a blue sky backdrop. So does the sun’s power to wash out those colours in the middle of the day, when I am, unfortunately, often out walking with camera at the ready, and to intensify them at dawn and dusk.

 

Uluru takes on many different hues during the day.

Over the last week Simon and I have done five walks with colours and textures in common yet all distinctly different. We circumnavigated Uluru, delighting in its curves and crevices and the stories about their creation; trod the Kings Canyon rim walk, sans chiffon and killer heels – why attempt to best that famous scene in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, when we were doomed to fail? – and teetered on the edge of cliffs that are vertiginous even in hiking boots; wandered through a grove of red cabbage palms dating back to the Gondwana era and watered by the world’s oldest river; climbed to the highest point on the Larapinta Trail, to look out over mountain ranges worn by time from Himalayan heights; and, our current pick of the five – have you got a favourite outback walk? – approached Ormiston Gorge from the vast pound behind it, rock-hopping back to the car down a corridor of fractured, sloping, layered stone rearing skyward.

Each walk was like stepping into a painting. See what I mean!

Gorgeous grevillea (TBC) and Tall Mulla Mulla

Simon on the edge atop Mt Sonder and dwarfed by geology in Ormiston Gorge

Layers in the rock on Mount Sonder and a eucalypt at Redbank Gorge