DISCOVER OUR FINAL FRONTIER

In Western Australia’s Purnululu National Park, hundreds of dome-shaped towers rise from the rustbrown earth like a city of enormous beehives. Sculpted over 20 million years by wind and water, the burnt orange and black striped rocks of the Bungle Bungle Range are what makes this World Heritage-listed park one of the most spectacular in the world. From a light plane above, the sheer number and scale of these bulbous sandstone mounds becomes apparent. Rising up to 250 metres above the surrounding semiarid savannah grassland, some of the domes are so tall and hive-like that you’d be forgiven for thinking giant, buzzing bees might suddenly appear. It’s magical: To gaze dewy-eyed at the endless Kimberley landscape as your pilot manoeuvres over the fanciful rocks and sheer ridges textured by time. Until the early 1980s, few people had heard of the Bungle Bungle Range. Tucked up against the Northern Territory border, with a rough dirt access track and located about 150 kilometres from the tiny Kimberley town of Halls Creek, the curved peaks and spinifex-dominated sand plains were mostly hidden from the world’s view. It wasn’t until an airborne film crew captured this 2400-squarekilometre slice of wilderness for their documentary “Wonders of Western Australia” in 1983 that the Bungle Bungle Range was introduced to the world. No doubt the ancestors of the Gija and Jaru peoples, who have had a persistent cultural connection to the area for tens of thousands of years, would have been astonished to learn that Purnululu had suddenly become so widely known. In 1987, this treasure was declared a national park, and 15 years ago it was inscribed on the UNESCO list for its “outstanding universal natural heritage values.” As the crow flies, the western edge of the Bungle Bungle Range is about 20 miles east of the Great Northern Highway. “To think that this expansive, impressive landform remained ‘hidden’ for so long is remarkable, but it also doesn’t surprise me about the Kimberley,” says Silversea Expedition Team member Mike Cusack. “The region is three times the size of England but has only 36,000 permanent residents – there are probably still places that non-Indigenous people have not yet ‘discovered.’” Written by Leah McLennan. Excerpt taken from Discover, the Silversea travel blog.

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