For many, the Kimberley is Australia's last great adventure: a tropical region the size of a country, with fewer people than a city neighbourhood, where the tarmac ends and the real outback begins. Red iron gorges with turquoise pools, waterfalls tumbling into open savanna, crocodiles sunbathing, ancient boabs, the most remote fjord coastline in the world and the beehive-striped domes of the Bungle Bungle. It's not a place to pass through: it's a place you need to prepare for.
The heart of the overland adventure is the Gibb River Road, 600 kilometres of corrugated dirt between Derby and Kununurra, an old cattle route that is now the country's most legendary road trip, with detours to gorges such as Bell, Manning and Windjana, to Mitchell Falls and to cattle stations turned into parks like El Questro. And the crown jewel is Purnululu (the Bungle Bungle), a World Heritage Site whose orange and black domes are best seen from a scenic flight. All of this is only accessible in the dry season (May to September).
This guide makes sense of an intimidating region: what to see and from which base (Broome in the west, Kununurra in the east), what you do by 4x4 and what by plane or cruise, how much Purnululu entry and scenic flights cost, how many days you really need, why you should only travel in the dry, and how to prepare for the lack of signal, fuel and water. It also tells you the deep history of the Kimberley: its ancient rock art (Gwion Gwion and Wandjina) and the resistance of Jandamarra. Everything verified as of July 2026.
The Kimberley is the Country of dozens of Aboriginal peoples —Bunuba, Ngarinyin, Worrorra, Wunumbal, Miriwoong, Yawuru and many more— with one of the longest continuous human presences on the planet (there is evidence going back tens of thousands of years). Here you'll find some of the oldest rock art sites made by humankind: the elegant Gwion Gwion figures (formerly 'Bradshaw'), up to ~20.000 years old or more, and the powerful Wandjina, rain spirits that are still alive in the culture. When pastoralists arrived in the 19th century, the Bunuba people resisted under the leadership of Jandamarra, at Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Australia's largest state, covering almost a third of the continent: the ancestral land of the Noongar people and dozens of desert nations, colonised from the Swan River Colony in 1829, transformed by Kalgoorlie gold and today a global iron ore powerhouse. Its capital, Perth, is the most isolated major city on the planet.
Read the history of Western Australia →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Few places on Earth have a human history as deep as the Kimberley. Its red ranges, gorges and plains are the Country of dozens of Aboriginal peoples (Bunuba, Ngarinyin, Worrorra, Wunambal, Miriwoong, Gija, Yawuru, Nyikina and many more), whose presence here is measured in tens of thousands of years. This is one of the oldest continuously inhabited regions on the planet. People have lived here since the sea stood at a different level, and much of their everyday life was recorded, quite literally, in the rock.
Above all, the Kimberley is one of the largest rock art galleries in the world, and one of the oldest. Its rock shelters and cliff walls hold paintings so old that they astonish scientists. The region was, and still is, a cultural landscape where every gorge, every waterhole and every rock formation has its own Dreaming story, its own laws and its own responsibilities. The seasonal abundance of the tropical savanna, with its dry season and its extreme wet season, shaped a culture with deep knowledge of the land, water, fire and wildlife.
Knowing this changes how you see the 'wild' Kimberley. What many visitors take for untouched, virgin nature is really a land that its peoples have cared for and lived on for millennia. They managed it with fire, travelled it along songlines and filled it with sacred sites. It isn't empty. It is living Country, and its owners never left.
Kimberley rock art is so extraordinary that it is studied all over the world, and it has two famous traditions that are worth telling apart. The first is the Gwion Gwion figures. These are slender, elegant human figures painted in very fine detail, with headdresses, bags, tassels and other ornaments, often shown in movement or ceremony. For a long time they were called 'Bradshaw' paintings, after the pastoralist Joseph Bradshaw, who recorded them for Europeans in 1891. Aboriginal peoples rightly prefer their own name for them: Gwion Gwion. They are extremely old. Estimates put them at many thousands of years, and some dates go back more than 12,000 years, which places them among the oldest figurative art made by humans.
The other great tradition is the Wandjina, and it differs in every way. Wandjina are large faces of ancestral spirits of rain and clouds: broad faces with huge eyes and no mouth, surrounded by a radiant halo. Unlike Gwion Gwion, Wandjina art is a LIVING tradition. The Worrorra, Ngarinyin and Wunambal peoples have kept painting and repainting these images over the last few thousand years. To them the Wandjina aren't 'art' in the Western sense. They are powerful beings who created the landscape and control the monsoon rains, and repainting them is a way of caring for Country and upholding the law.
These sites are sacred and fragile, and many are on Aboriginal land with restricted access. Visiting them is a privilege. You need permission, you go with Traditional Owner guides, you don't touch anything and you don't use flash. Standing in front of a Gwion Gwion figure thousands of years old, or a Wandjina face with its vast gaze, you start to grasp how much time and spirit this land holds.
European colonisation came late and it came with violence. Only in the second half of the 19th century did explorers and pastoralists begin to invade the Kimberley, setting up huge sheep and cattle stations on Aboriginal land. The clash was brutal. People were dispossessed, massacred and poisoned, and Aboriginal people were rounded up and forced to work on the stations as near-slave labour. Yet the Kimberley also saw one of the most remarkable acts of Aboriginal resistance in Australian history, and it centred on one man: Jandamarra.
Jandamarra (c. 1870-1897) was a young Bunuba man, whose people lived in the ranges of the western Kimberley. As a boy on the stations he learned to ride, shear sheep and handle firearms. He became the best stockman in the district and even worked as a police tracker. In 1894, though, he was made to hunt down his own people, and he switched sides. On the night of 31 October he killed Constable Richardson, freed the Bunuba prisoners and handed out the guns. This began a guerrilla war against the settlers and the police. At Windjana Gorge in November 1894, Jandamarra and the Bunuba warriors fought an armed party for hours. He was wounded, then hid in the caves until he recovered.
For almost three years Jandamarra defied colonial power from the ranges. He used his knowledge of the land, including its caves and tunnels such as Tunnel Creek (Dimalurru), to appear and vanish, and he earned an almost mythical reputation. The settlers believed he could turn into a bird. In 1897 he was finally tracked down and shot dead at Tunnel Creek, the same sacred place where he had so often taken refuge. To the Bunuba people Jandamarra isn't an outlaw. He is a resistance hero who fought for his land and his people. His story is now told with pride, and you can feel it on every visit to Windjana and Tunnel Creek.
While the interior filled up with cattle stations, the coast had a different story: pearls. In the late 19th century Broome became the pearling capital of the world. The trade was in pearl shell (mother-of-pearl, used for buttons), and it drew divers and workers from Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, China and elsewhere, who worked alongside Yawuru Aboriginal people and Europeans. The trade was hugely profitable and extremely dangerous. Hundreds of divers died from decompression sickness ('the bends') and from storms, and Broome's Japanese cemetery keeps that memory alive. That era produced the unique cultural mix that still defines Broome, with its Chinatown and its multicultural heritage. Meanwhile, in the eastern Kimberley, gold was found at Halls Creek in the 1880s and set off a short-lived rush. Much later the Argyle diamond mine, famous for its pink diamonds, drove the economy around Kununurra until it closed in 2020.
The 20th century also brought major projects and deep wounds. The Ord River irrigation scheme was built, creating the enormous Lake Argyle and turning Kununurra into an agricultural oasis. For Aboriginal peoples, though, it was also the century of assimilation policies, missions and the Stolen Generations, when Aboriginal children were taken from their families. The fight for land and recognition was a long one.
Today Aboriginal people are taking back a central role in the Kimberley. In 2012 the Federal Court recognised the Bunuba people's native title over much of their ancestral Country, the same land Jandamarra fought for, and many other peoples have won similar recognition. More and more, Kimberley tourism is led by Traditional Owners through cultural tours, Aboriginal guides at rock art sites and community-owned businesses. The region is still one of the world's last great wilderness areas. Visitors who come today can understand it for what it really is. It is no empty wasteland waiting to be 'discovered'. It is an ancient, sacred and living land whose owners have been here for tens of thousands of years and are still telling their story.
