The Great Kimberley Wilderness Loop - Britz

Ten nights and 2,641 kilometres in a loop from Broome in a 4WD camper, which strings together most of the Kimberley’s set pieces in a single run.

Fitzroy Crossing and Geikie Gorge come first, where the river has cut through a Devonian reef, then the Mimbi Caves on Gooniyandi country, with rock art and marine fossils in the same chambers. Wolfe Creek Crater follows, a meteorite crater nearly a kilometre across and among the best preserved in the world.

Purnululu is next, where the Bungle Bungle range stands as banded sandstone domes striped orange and grey, and which was effectively unknown outside the region until the 1980s. Kununurra, El Questro and Home Valley Station follow below the Cockburn Range, then the route turns west along the Gibb River Road for Manning and Bell gorges and Windjana, with Derby before Broome.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Eleven days for 2,641 kilometres of largely unsealed road is a demanding schedule, and the access track into Purnululu alone takes a couple of hours each way for fifty kilometres. The season runs roughly May to October and the park gates close outside it, so the dates are not negotiable on this one. Anyone with a fortnight rather than eleven days would do better to take the same ground more slowly, since the gorges are what people remember and they are the first thing a tight schedule squeezes.