Devils Marbles

Karlu Karlu, which most maps still label with the colonial name Devils Marbles, sits about 105 kilometres south of Tennant Creek on the Stuart Highway, and I nearly drove past it the first time because from a distance it looks like nothing more than a low rocky hill. Then you get closer and realise the hill is made of individual granite boulders the size of houses, some perfectly round, some cracked clean through the middle, balanced on top of each other in stacks that look engineered and are entirely the product of about 1.7 billion years of granite weathering unevenly from the inside out.

I arrived in the last hour before sunset, which is the only correct way to see this place — the low light turns the granite from grey-pink to a deep, saturated red-orange, and the boulders start throwing shadows that make the whole field look like it’s breathing. Karlu Karlu is a sacred site for the Warumungu, Kaytetye, Alyawarre, and Warlpiri peoples, associated with the Dreaming stories of the Devil Man’s hair, and there are marked walking trails that keep respectful distance from ceremonial areas while still letting you wander close enough to touch the rock, which is warm long after the sun has gone.

I camped at the small campground within the reserve, which has almost no facilities and exactly the right amount of nothing else around it. A family of black-footed rock wallabies came out at dusk from between two of the larger boulders, and I sat still enough for long enough that one came within about four metres before deciding I wasn’t worth the risk. That’s the kind of encounter you get here — not scheduled, not guided, just the result of sitting quietly in a place that rewards patience.

When to go: April through September for cooler daytime temperatures. Arrive an hour before sunset and stay until the last light — the colour shift on the granite is the entire reason to come, and it lasts less than twenty minutes.