Australia
Karlu Karlu (Devil's Marbles)
Granite boulders balanced like marbles by millions of years of wind, sacred in Warumungu Dreaming.
Granite boulders the size of houses balance on contact points no wider than a handshake. Some are stacked. Some are split clean in half. The physics should not work, but it has worked for millions of years — thermal expansion and contraction holding stone in arrangements that look deliberately placed.
Karlu Karlu (Devil's Marbles) Conservation Reserve sits beside the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory, 100 kilometres south of Tennant Creek. The boulders — some over six metres in diameter — are the weathered remnants of a granite intrusion that cooled underground millions of years ago, then was exposed and shaped by thermal fracturing as the rock expanded by day and contracted by night. Warumungu people know Karlu Karlu as the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent — a Dreaming story that explains both the boulders and the landscape they occupy. Camping is permitted directly among the boulders, placing you within arm's reach of formations that glow orange at dawn and deep red at sunset.
Solo
Camping alone among balanced boulders under an outback sky — Karlu Karlu is roadside geology that stops you mid-drive and holds you overnight.
Couple
Dawn light on granite boulders that glow orange against a blue sky — sleeping among them is free and unforgettable.
- Granite boulders balanced on tiny contact points by millions of years of thermal expansion and contraction.
- Warumungu Dreaming describes these as the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent — the sacred stories are painted nearby.
- Dawn and dusk turn the boulders from grey to gold to deep red — the colour shifts are fast.
- You can camp beside the boulders — falling asleep under them, wondering at the physics holding them up.
Camp cooking at the basic campground as the boulders turn blood-red in the sunset.
Wycliffe Well Roadhouse — self-proclaimed UFO capital of Australia, serving roadhouse pies and cold drinks.
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