They are draining in their beauty, demanding in a way - it's just hard to put the camera down. So at Kings Canyon I just walked and looked and wondered and soaked it all in and said "wow" out loud and to nobody in particular a lot. Australians have a word for it; "gobsmacked."
I was gobsmacked by Kings Canyon, absolutely stunned by the geology and plant life, by the brick-red honeycombed domes of rock and the polished black cliffs, by the pines and palm species growing side by side.
You want the land that time forgot? Here it is in Central Australia. If a Stegosaurus appeared on the trail it would look like it was at home and you were the invader from another age. If a pteradactyl swooped overhead you could shrug it off as normal. It is that weird-looking a place, that wonderful a place, that gobsmacking a place.
So I took no pictures at Kings Canyon. Go there. Get your own. Or just leave the camera in your pack and flow along with the living red rock and the brilliant blue Australian desert sky. That works too.