Some folks say the colours in the Australian Outback are monotonous, but look closer and you’ll discover a rainbow of nature’s hues, particularly if you visit Rudall River National Park.
There’s the ochre of the harsh desert landscape, the terracotta of the ancient hills and the hardy green of native plants. Add the dusty beige of feral camels and wild dingos, the shiny red and gold streaks in the ‘jasper’ rock and the startling sapphire depths of an unexpected oasis, then stretch this pastiche out endlessly beneath a searing and cloudless, cornflower blue sky and you’ve painted a picture of Rudall.
Rudall River National Park is indeed the land of many colours, but most people don’t even know it exists. Straddling a massive 1.2 million hectares, this rugged area is Australia’s second largest national park and one of the world’s most remote wilderness areas. Bordered by the Great Sandy and Little Sandy Deserts, Rudall features spinifex grass country, salt lakes, sand dunes, rocky outcrops, and more than 90 species of birds and 37 native mammal species.
Situated 800 kms inland from Ningaloo Reef (which is famous for its whale sharks and coral) Rudall is 250 tough kms away from the closest ‘civilisation’ - the mining town of Newman. Originally named Karlamilyi after a local Aboriginal tribe, Rudall is hidden away in the north of Western Australia, the largest and least populated State “Down Under”, a place in which less than two million people inhabit an area about the same size as continental Europe.
Rudall is the ideal destination for travelers who love outback challenge and adventure. Explored in the 1890’s and proclaimed in 1977, it has few signs, no reliable water and no facilities. Colourful though it may be, in a place like this, you need all the help and support you can get - 13 lone travelers have perished in the region in the past decade.
One of the safest and most pleasant ways to experience Rudall is to join a personally escorted and catered, self drive “tag-along-tour” with safari operator, Global Gypsies. Traveling in the safety of a small convoy, clients drive themselves in their own or hired 4WD vehicles and follow ‘tag-a-long’ style behind an experienced convoy leader - independent, but not alone.
Each year Tour Guide Jeremy Perks leads a group of intrepid gypsies into the park, and each year the experience is unique. One minute the convoy might be rolling across corrugated roads of red dust lined by spinifex and bare plains. An hour later the road might become a deeply rutted sand track with kangaroos leaping in front of the vehicles, while the evening’s campsite might reveal huge gums on a lazy riverbank, with ancient cliffs towering above rocky outcrops.
On the next year’s expedition those same giant gums may be lying prone and lifeless on the ground, ripped out at the roots by a powerful cyclonic flood, and the formerly large and shady natural campsite might be unrecognisable.
Highlights include picturesque and craggy Carrawine Gorge with its rock pools and swimming holes; Marble Bar – the hottest town in WA; the seldom visited Kennedy Ranges; Mt. Augustus – WA’s answer to Ayers Rock; and of course, the vast and challenging artist’s palette that is Rudall.
All who visit this inaccessible and inhospitable place try to capture its unusual beauty through a camera lens so they can paste the memory in a book. But like dreams, the colours vanish, and are only ever truly visible in your mind.
