THE Kimberley township of Kununurra – “big river” in the local Indigenous language – is located 3219km north of Perth on the banks of the Ord River.
The town, home to 7500 people, serves as the gateway to enough Kimberley adventures to justify using it as a base for a four or five-day stay.
There are four-wheel-drive excursions, cruises on Lake Argyle and the Ord River, charter flights over the Bungle Bungles, fishing forays in the Lower Ord River, visits to the world’s largest open-cut diamond mine, swimming in crocodile-free waterholes, movie nights at an open-air cinema and festivals you won’t find anywhere else in the country.
One of the reasons you need plenty of time is that everything is vast in this part of the world and there are long distances to be covered.
From Kununurra it’s a 70km drive to Lake Argyle, the largest man-made lake in the southern hemisphere, where on day one of our visit we board a vessel with Triple J Tours for the 55km journey back into Kununurra.
However, first we visit the Argyle Homestead Museum for a fascinating insight into the lives and hardships of the Kimberley’s pioneering families. The 1880s museum was once the home of prominent pastoralists, the Durack family.
Located on the Argyle Downs Station, it was carefully dismantled and moved to its present site when Lake Argyle was completed in 1963. People talk in breathless tones when they mention the swimming pool at the local caravan park. When you see it, you know why.
Lake Argyle Resort Caravan Park boasts the most breathtaking pool not just in the region, but possibly anywhere in Australia. If you’re not staying there, you can register as a day visitor and use the park’s facilities, including the infinity pool overlooking the lake, for $10.
Lake Argyle itself features 90 islands and many bays and is home to 25,000 freshwater crocodiles and a few stray “salties”.
A third of Australia’s bird species can also be found here. People go snap-happy the first time they see a crocodile but here there are so many that people soon put their cameras down.
The following day a helicopter flight with Kingfisher Tours over Kununurra, the Ord River and Lake Argyle, gives a birds-eye view of the scale of the lake, which holds 21 times the volume of Sydney Harbour in normal conditions and up to 80 times in peak flood conditions.
The lake is so large it is classified as an inland sea. The flight also takes us over the Argyle diamond mine and the striking sandstone domes or “beehives” of the Bungle Bungle Ranges. The range is estimated to be around 360 million years old and was carved over 20 million years by erosion.
* Sue Preston was a guest of Tourism Western Australia and Australia’s North West Tourism.
