Frommer's Australia from $50 a Day 13th Edition - To Parent Directory

THE KIMBERLEY: A FAR-FLUNG WILDERNESS 471
In Coral Bay
Ningaloo Reef Resort Finds This low-rise complex of motel rooms, studios,
and apartments stands out as the best place to stay among Coral Bay’s profusion
of backpacker hostels. Located on a blissfully green lawn with a pool overlooking
the bay, the rooms are nothing fancy or new, but they’re clean, with views
toward the bay and the pool. The place has a nice communal air, thanks to the
bar doubling as the local pub.
At the end of Robinson St., Coral Bay, WA 6701. & 08/9942 5934. Fax 08/9942 5953. www.coralbay.
org/resort.htm. 34 units, all with bathroom (shower only). A$138–A$143 (US$90–US$93) double; A$175–
A$285 (US$114–US$185) apt. Extra adult A$11 (US$7.15), extra child A$5.50–A$11 (US$3.60–US$7.15).
Weekly rates available. MC, V. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; outdoor pool; self-service laundry. In room: A/C,
TV, hair dryers and irons (available at front desk), no phone.
6 The Kimberley: A Far-Flung Wilderness
Most Aussies would be hard put to name a single settlement, river, or mountain
within the Kimberley, so rarely visited and sparsely inhabited is this wilderness.
This is an ancient land of red, rocky plateaus stretching for thousands of kilometers,
jungly ravines, endless bush, crocodile-infested wetlands, surreal-looking
boab trees with trunks shaped like bottles, lily-filled rock pools, lonely islandstrewn
coastline, droughts in winter, and floods in summer. The dry, spreading
scenery might call to mind Africa or India. In the Dry, the area’s biggest river,
the Fitzroy, is empty, but in the Wet, its swollen banks are second only to the
Amazon in the volume of water that surges to the sea. Aqua and scarlet are two
colors that will hit you in the eye in the Kimberley—a luminous aqua for the
sea, and the fiery scarlet of the fine soil hereabouts called pindan. The area is
famous for Wandjina-style Aboriginal rock art depicting people with circular
hair-dos that look more than a little like beings from outer space. It is also
known for another kind of rock art known as “Bradshaw figures,” stick-like representations
of human forms, which may be the oldest art on earth. A mere
25,000 people live in the Kimberley’s 420,000 sq. km (1,638,000 sq. miles).
That’s three times the size of England.
The unofficial capital of the East Kimberley is Kununurra. It’s a small agricultural
town that serves as the gateway to wildlife river cruises; the Bungle
Bungles , a massive labyrinth of beehive-shaped rock formations; and to a
400,000-hectare (988,000-acre) cattle station where you can hike, fish, and
cruise palm-filled gorges by day and sleep in comfy permanent safari tents or
glamorous homestead rooms by night. The main town in the West Kimberley is
the Outback port of Broome whose waters give up the world’s biggest and
best South Sea pearls. Linking Kununurra and Derby, near Broome, is the Gibb
River Road, an isolated 4WD track through cattle-station country that is
becoming popular with adventure travelers.
Off the West Kimberley coast lies a jigsaw puzzle of 10,000 or more barely
inhabited islands, the Bonaparte and Buccaneer Archipelagos , the last
named in honor of the pirate’s pirate, William Dampier, who sailed here in
1688. In fact, much of the appeal of this coastline lies in the knowledge that few
Westerners have laid eyes on it since the first explorers of the 17th century.
EXPLORING THE KIMBERLEY
VISITOR INFORMATION The Kimberley Tourism Association, P.O.
Box 554, Broome, WA 6725 (& 08/9193 6660; www.kimberleytourism.com),
supplies information on the entire region. The Kununurra Visitor Centre and