red heart
The Red Centre is the beating heart of Australia, and Outback Spirit guides Karen and Daryl Morris have taken its pulse. Here, they reveal what makes them fall in love with this pocket of the country, time and time again.
WORDS Natasha Dragun
You could be forgiven for mistaking the Red Centre’s scenery for a sci-fi movie set. One of the most sparsely populated places on the planet – with just 33,000 people across 600,000 square kilometres – the Central Australian region is remote, rugged and ravishing. Depending on the time of year you visit, waterfalls can pour off every cliff edge, vast canyons are decorated with the world’s oldest rock art, and gorges carve through 400-million-year-old sandstone escarpments. Amid it all you’ll find the world’s largest monolith – Uluru – and impenetrable ochre chasms enveloped by witchety bushes and tall stands of spinifex grass that bristle like an old man’s beard.
In the Red Centre, the skies feel wider, the air cleaner, the night skies brighter, the wilderness, well, wilder. This is nature writ large, a true frontier that excites your imagination like nowhere else in Australia.
It’s a frontier that constantly captivates Karen and Daryl Morris, husband-and-wife Outback Spirit guides who have been coming to this part of the world together for more than 17 years. The duo met in the UK (Karen’s home country) some 20 years ago. Aussie Daryl wandered into a Liverpool bar and brought Karen a drink. “And we’ve been joined at the hip ever since!” says Karen. Daryl – aka ‘Smiley’ – had previously worked and lived in Alice Springs (Mparntwe) for three years, and the destination was so important to him that it was here that they wed, on the grounds of the town’s legendary Telegraph Station. “This is where Australia’s first communication happened with the UK,” says Smiley. “So we thought it was fitting. We still go back all the time. It’s a big part of our life. There’s so much to see in Alice and the people are amazing. Everyone talks to you, and the art scene is thriving.”
Karen and Smiley began with Outback Spirit 11 years ago, and have seen pretty much every corner of Central Australia as guides together since. “It’s hard to pick one place in the Red Centre that we love the most,” says Karen. “Every time you visit, you experience this part of Australia in a new way. When you visit you can’t help but feel moved.” Although she admits she was thrown in the deep end on her first Outback Spirit guiding experience, a 22-day camping tour from Darwin (Garramilla) to Alice Springs. “I was the official cook. I’d never cooked before in my life! But I loved every minute of it. It was absolutely brilliant.”
Today, Karen and Smiley spend the majority of their time hosting Outback Spirit guests on the six-day Red Centre Explorer itinerary, incorporating destinations like Kings Canyon (Watarrka), Alice Springs, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Ormiston Gorge (Kwartatuma) and Standley Chasm (Angkerle Atwatye).
Smiley says that each tour he does with Outback Spirit is imbued with a love for the location based on his own experiences, and this helps guide how he hosts. One experience in particular still gives him goosebumps. This was a relocation trip from Alice to Broome (Rubibi). “Karen and I set up camp for the night on a red, rusty sand dune in the middle of the desert. The middle of nowhere. There was no light or sound. It was just us, a bottle of wine and our swags. We watched the sun setting spectacularly in the west, and the moon rising at the same time in the east. You have to pinch yourself – is this for real? The rest of the world didn’t matter.”
At the heart of the Red Centre, the huge sand dunes of the Simpson Desert (Munga-Thirri) provide an unparalleled sense of scale. “This is one of the most remote outback areas in the country,” says Smiley. “It’s massive – it’s truly mind-boggling how big it is. There are no towns and cities here, just a few sheep stations and small Aboriginal settlements. The dunes are the oldest static dunes (and longest parallel dunes) on Earth. Some of the red dunes today have more than 40 reptiles living in a single dune.”
Karen and Daryl Morris, (husband and wife) joined Outback Spirit 11 years ago, and have seen pretty much every corner of Central Australia as guides together since.
Underneath it all is the Great Artesian Basin, one of the largest underground freshwater resources in the world. “Water from the basin rises to the surface at numerous natural springs through Central Australia,” says Smiley. “There’s no finer water to drink. About 120 million years ago you could find the Inland Sea here. There’s still evidence of some of the world’s earliest fossilisations. If you sense the hairs on the back of your neck stand up because you feel like you’ve been here before… well, there’s a reason for that.”
It’s this diversity and immensity of landscapes that brings Karen and Smiley back, season after season. “I love Uluru, of course,” says Karen. “Visiting and seeing Bruce Munro’s Field of Light installation is an incredible experience – with all those bulbs casting even more colours over the desert countryside.” While Munro’s concept for the project was planted back in 1992 after a visit to Central Australia, it was launched in his home in the UK, and only made its way to the Red Centre in 2016. Today, it covers more than seven football fields and includes 50,000 spindles of light, the stems breathing and swaying through a desert spectrum of ochre, violet, blue and pearl.
“We also take guests to see Wintjiri Wiru,” says Karen, “where more than 1,000 drones create a spectacular light show overhead, telling an ancient Mala (creation) story of the Anangu Traditional Owners of the land. We come at sunset and have canapes as the day ends. It’s mesmerising.” This part of the Red Centre dials up nature’s drama whenever you visit. “But I really love Uluru in the rain,” says Karen. “It’s particularly special because only about 1 per cent of visitors get to see it this way. It’s magical, with waterfalls gushing off the rock creating waterholes at the base. At some times, there’s so much rain that this part of the world should be called the ‘Green Centre’! But that’s the beauty of Central Australia – everything is different at all times of the year. The weather, plants, flowers, animals... everything is constantly evolving.”
Other destinations that fascinate Karen and Smiley abound. “Walking into Kata Tjuta [the Olgas, around 40 kilometres west of Uluru] is always a highlight –,” says Karen. “We hike around the soaring rock domes, which glow at sunrise and sunset and change colour with the surrounding desert landscape. You feel so small being here – but in a good way.”
The crater at Gosses Bluff (Tnorala), west of Alice Springs, truly makes an impact. “Visiting is a bit like being at Ground Zero,” says Smiley. “A comet slammed into the Earth here around 140 million years ago. It’s hard to fathom.”
And then there’s the Mereenie Loop outside Alice. “We just love it,” says Karen. “It’s an alternative scenic route from Alice Springs to Watarrka (Kings Canyon) and Uluru via the Western MacDonnell Ranges (Tjoritja).”
“These ranges were once Himalayan-sized!” says Smiley. “There’s so much geology here. And yes, as a result, a lot of people come to look at rocks. But there’s so much else here. The amount of bush foods and medicines available is also staggering.” While they spend almost every minute of every day together, Karen and Smiley say they wouldn’t have it any other way. “We work really well as a team, and our skills complement each other. Although it’s always Karen’s way!” says Smiley. “We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.” “Daryl has incredible knowledge of Aboriginal history in the Red Centre,” adds Karen.
Having spent time with the Red Centre’s Anangu communities, Karen and Smiley are inspired to include Indigenous cultural stories into their tours of the Red Centre. “Aboriginal communities here operate most things in Central Australia,” says Smiley. “This is their land, and they have a huge involvement in the tourism industry. With their permission, we teach guests about things like Anangu body language – how to greet Traditional Owners and Elders, and how to strike up a conversation. It’s an important part of Australia’s history and identity. And it’s equally important to break down barriers. “I encourage our guests to take a deep breath, slow down and look around,” says Smiley. “If you take the time you’ll see petite bush tomatoes, lemon myrtle, the largest red cabbage plants on Earth… and you get to sample it all during our tours. That’s Karen’s expertise.”
“When we visit Kings Creek Station there is plenty of bush food on the dinner menu,” says Karen. “You get to try barramundi in paperbark, lemon myrtle and emu parfait, a desert lime and green ant tart… these are native ingredients that are now being used by top restaurants around the world. And they’re here in abundance in our backyard. When you slow down you also notice the finer details that make this place so special. The footprints of birds, the imprints of reptiles. It’s not just desert and rocks. Everything tells a story.” Will Karen and Smiley ever tire of visiting the Red Centre? “Never!” says Karen. “It’s a timeless and hugely spiritual place. I’ll never get sick of being here.”
“In the Red Centre, the skies feel wider, the air cleaner, the night skies brighter, the wilderness, well, wilder.”
THE DETAILS
TOUR
The Red Centre Explorer itinerary with Outback Spirit highlights include 2 nights at the 5-star Sails in the Desert Hotel, guided walks through Kings Canyon and the West MacDonnell Ranges, and experiencing Uluru. Prices start at $4,995 pp for the 2024 six-day tour, and $5,653 pp for the new eight-day 2025 tour.