Kimberley

The Kimberley is what people picture when they imagine the Australian outback in its most extreme form. An area the size of California, containing a total permanent population of about 40,000 people, divided by an extraordinary tidal coastline of drowned ranges and cut by gorges that descend 100 metres from a flat surface to clear water below. It doesn't feel like anywhere else on Earth.

Purnululu National Park's Bungle Bungle Range — those extraordinary tiger-striped domes of sandstone, barely known outside Australia before 1983 — is the visual centrepiece. Cathedral Gorge, a natural amphitheatre inside the domes, is reached by a 3km walk across sandy creek beds and enters a cool, echoing chamber where the walls rise 100 metres. The Gibb River Road, 660 kilometres of corrugated dirt between Derby and Kununurra, passes through vast cattle station country with deep waterhole gorges on private land — Bell Gorge, Galvans, Manning and El Questro among them.

The Horizontal Waterfalls in Talbot Bay — seawater forced through narrow coastal gorges by the 12-metre tides of the Kimberley coast — are best seen by seaplane, which then lands on a station houseboat for the night. This is expensive Australia, remote Australia, and genuinely unforgettable Australia. The dry season window (May–September) is the only practical time to go.