Karlu Karlu, also known as the Devils Marbles, are enormous rounded granite boulders scattered across a valley 100 kilometres south of Tennant Creek in Australia’s Red Centre.

For anyone who is not familiar with the geography of the Northern Territory – the location of these rock formations of volcanic origin, 400 kilometres to the north of Alice Springs, is one of the most remote on earth.

As you drive north from Alice Springs on the Stuart Highway, you’ll encounter a no-man’s-land like few of us have seen before. An empty vastness stretches for 1500 kilometres to Darwin on the shores of the Timor Sea. To the south of Alice Springs, you’ll find the same outback wilderness and just as much of it.

Apart from two small towns, Katherine and Tennant Creek, and a couple of roadhouses, there’s no man-made structure, no natural landscape feature. Nothing to break the overwhelming monotony of a vast red landscape studded with termite mounds, round knobs of prickly spinifex, and small, thin trees placed far apart for thousands of kilometres until you hit Darwin.

Where the road meets a glimmering horizon, the sweltering, oppressive heat paints a fata morgana of a blurry stretch of water. You know there’s plenty of life out here, but there seems to be none. Even the traffic thins to a few road trains an hour. These monster trucks pulling three or four swerving trailers with a billowing cloud of brownish-red dust trailing behind them.

The remoteness and scarcity of competing landscape features such as a mountain or even a small, insignificant rocky outcrop certainly contribute to the Devils Marbles’ allure, but the rock boulders are spectacular in their own right.

Sculpted by the erosive might of wind and water, the form of the marbles differs. You’ll see rectangular slabs of rock stacked neatly on top of each other with the corners smoothed down. When more sandstone has eroded, the rounded corners become rounder still and the gap between the slabs increases. The most fascinating sight are some perfectly rounded marbles perched precariously on top of another marble, just before erosion and gravity topple the artistic structure.

If you can, spend one night at the campground and explore the boulders as dusk approaches and take in a spectacular sunset with fiery red hues all around from Nyanjiki Lookout. Dawn is equally beautiful with the rocks painted in more subdued, softer colours underneath a watery blue sky.

As you explore the reserve, please keep in mind that this site is sacred to the Aboriginal owners of the land and climbing on the marbles off the designated trails is prohibited.