Kimberley calling

A guided four-wheel drive tour along the Gibb River Road provides ample opportunity for a Kimberley obsession, writes Carolyn Beasley.

“Ready for take-off?”

asks my pilot. I give a thumbs up, and the blades spin to life with a ‘wump, wump, wump’ that I can feel through my body. A small plume of dust dances around us before we rise up from the arid savannah, tracking towards the Bungle Bungle Range. Within a minute I’m leaning out the open side of the chopper snapping photos of gorges and weathered rocky outcrops, compulsively checking my seatbelt as we bank over sacred indigenous lands bordering the Tanami Desert.

Finally, we’re flying over the famous beehive-shaped karsts, a UNESCO World Heritage-listed landscape. This iconic Kimberley scene is unlike anything I’ve seen before.

The helicopter action takes place in Purnululu National Park, Western Australia, as part of a guided four-wheel drive bus tour run by APT. The trip takes in some of the must-see destinations of the region in a nine-day loop from Broome.

Together with 15 other passengers, I’m being guided by Graham Middlemiss, who regales us with history and science as we rumble along the Gibb River Road. Graham first visited the Kimberley eight years ago, and felt compelled to return. “The Kimberley really grabs you,” he tells me wistfully, and there’s a hint of warning.

At Purnululu National Park, we’re staying at the Bungle Bungle Wilderness Lodge. My glamping tent is called Corella, and the name fits, as I wake early in the morning to the sound of cockatoos.

For a different perspective of the beehives, we take a short hike beside a dry creek bed, spotting iridescent rainbow bee-eaters, before arriving at the natural amphitheatre of

Cathedral Gorge. At Echidna Chasm at the opposite end of the park, the beehives are traded for mountains of conglomerate rock, and we negotiate a pebbly path barely one metre wide, staggered by sheer walls 200 metres high. Later at sunset drinks we watch the Bungles Bungles turn from burnt orange to purple, and raise a toast to the mighty Kimberley landscapes.

Water is scarce in the Kimberley, but pockets of freshwater linger, like the ancient Tunnel Creek cave system. With our torches, we clamber through a dark hole in the limestone and the 750-metre-long tunnel has several pools of knee-deep water for us to shuffle through. In one part, the ceiling has collapsed and shafts of light illuminate bats flitting in and out for respite from the heat.

Geikie Gorge is a deep stretch of the Fitzroy River, and wildlife is drawn to this dry-season water. From a rangerguided boat we view tiny fairy martins building nests of mud on the gorge walls, and brolgas dancing on the river bank. Agile wallabies hide in the bushes waiting to grab a drink, while crocodiles hide in the river, waiting to grab a wallaby.

The biggest waterhole is Lake Argyle, formed by the damming of the Ord River. There’s another dam here too, and we join Triple J Tours for a 55km boat journey along Lake Kununurra, formed by the Ord River irrigation dam in 1963. We glide through the Carr Boyd Range past squawking red-tailed black cockatoos and rock wallabies hiding in spectacular cliffs. Our trip ends where the Lake Argyle dam wall towers above us. Disembarking for photos atop the wall, we bus to the homestead built by the pioneering Durack family, relocated when Lake Argyle was flooded.

The Kimberley beckoned the Duracks and other Europeans with the prospect of almost unlimited cattle