Australia
Purnululu (Bungle Bungles)
Living black crust stripes orange sandstone domes across a Kimberley range.
Orange sandstone and dark cyanobacterial crust stripe hundreds of rounded domes above the Kimberley plain. Their shapes are arresting from the air and intimate on foot, but they were never a landscape waiting for outsiders to discover it.
Purnululu National Park protects the Bungle Bungle Range on Kija and Jaru Country. Erosion shaped its conical sandstone towers, while iron staining and living cyanobacterial crust produce the orange and dark horizontal bands. Cathedral Gorge and other formed walks reveal the southern range at ground level, reached through a seasonal park and a long four-wheel-drive approach.
Solo
Use formed walks or a guided visit and carry the water, communications and road plan required by the remote park.
Couple
Pair a ground-level gorge walk with an aerial view, allowing several days for road and weather changes.
- Orange sandstone and dark cyanobacterial bands give the domes their distinctive striped form.
- Cathedral Gorge opens into a broad sandstone chamber along a formed walking route.
- Kija and Jaru cultural authority corrects the colonial myth that this landscape was unknown before 1983.
- A seasonal opening and long four-wheel-drive approach keep Purnululu deliberately remote.
Boab nuts split to a chalky, sherbet-sour pith that has fed Kimberley people for thousands of years, crushed into water for a tangy drink.
In the park itself, every meal is what the four-wheel-drive carried in.
Barhal Valley
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10th-century Georgian churches stand forgotten in steep valleys where the road ends and peaks begin.
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A village of red clay houses inside a red-rock gorge, settled before the Soviets rearranged Kyrgyzstan.
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Silverton
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A railway snakes through fern valley to a gold town squeezed onto one narrow street.
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