Australia
Carnarvon Gorge
Ochre stencils crowd sandstone walls deep beyond a gorge of palms and creek crossings.
Ochre stencils, paintings and engravings cover protected sandstone surfaces deep in the gorge. Livistona palms follow Carnarvon Creek through country whose cultural meaning cannot be reduced to an outdoor gallery.
Carnarvon Gorge cuts into central Queensland's sandstone highlands, creating a cooler corridor of creek crossings, palms and side gorges. Designated cultural sites contain stencils, paintings and engravings made by Aboriginal people over a long span of occupation and ceremony; visitors remain outside protective rails and follow park interpretation. Side tracks to the Amphitheatre and Moss Garden add a narrow rock chamber, ferns and springs along a demanding main walking route.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · Powered by Geoapify
Solo
Start the long main track early, carry a full day's food and water, and keep every cultural-site barrier intact.
Couple
Share the creek crossings and side gorges, turning back while both walkers still have time and energy.
- Protected rock-art sites preserve layers of stencils, paintings and engravings within the gorge.
- Livistona palms follow Carnarvon Creek between pale sandstone walls.
- The Amphitheatre and Moss Garden each create a distinct side trip off the main track.
- Repeated creek crossings and long distances reward an early, well-provisioned walking plan.
The gorge's cycad seeds, toxic until carefully detoxified, were an important food of the local Aboriginal peoples.
Walkers' meals travel in the pack; the gorge supplies the table view.
Pitões das Júnias
Portugal
A monastery abandoned to wolves and rain crumbles beside a waterfall at the road's end.
Cumbemayo
Peru
Pre-Inca aqueducts carved through living rock — still channelling water after millennia.
Kyzyl-Oi
Kyrgyzstan
A village of red clay houses inside a red-rock gorge, settled before the Soviets rearranged Kyrgyzstan.
Salt Range
Pakistan
Crimson salt cliffs exposing the floor of a 600-million-year-old vanished ocean in Punjab's flat plains.
Queenstown
Australia
A century of smelting skinned Queenstown's hills; rainforest now creeps back at the edges.
Walhalla
Australia
A railway snakes through fern valley to a gold town squeezed onto one narrow street.
Silverton
Australia
Mad Max roads vanish into Mundi Mundi plain beyond corrugated-iron galleries and a former silver town.
Maria Island
Australia
Wombats graze between convict buildings on a car-free island edged by painted cliffs.