1 Cairns and District, North Queensland
2 The Gold Coast, Queensland
3 The Great Barrier Reef, Queensland
4 Great Ocean Road, Victoria
5 Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory
6 The Kimberley, Western Australia
7 Blue Mountains, New South Wales
8 Sydney Harbour & Sydney Opera House
9 Tasmania's World Heritage Site
10 Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Northern Territory
In the far north of Western Australia, the Kimberley is one of the continent's remotest and most spectacular regions.
Explored and settled as late as the 1880s, the Kimberley is extremely rugged and very sparsely settled - the population of just 25,000 lives in Aboriginal settlements, on enormous cattle stations, and in a few small towns. This vast region of 420,000sq km is generally divided into two main areas, the West and East Kimberley.
The tropical town of Broome, with its multicultural population, pearl history and fabulous beaches, is the ideal starting point for exploring the western region. The nearby settlement of Derby has an interesting Royal Flying Doctor Service base, while inland attractions include the dramatic Geikie Gorge National Park, with its 14km-long gorge. You can reach the East Kimberley by driving north and east from Broome or flying to Kununurra, a town near the Northern Territory border and the base for the ambitious 1960s and 1970s Ord River Irrigation Scheme. This project created the vast Argyle and Kununurra lakes - welcome breaks in the otherwise arid landscape. From here you can visit the Argyle Diamond Mine, then travel north to the remote port of Wyndham, or south to the wondrous Bungle Bungles. Contained within Purnululu National Park and `discovered' only in 1983, these spectacular rock formations, up to 300m high, are composed of extremely friable striped silica and sandstone eroded into beehive-like shapes. Other attractions worth seeing in this wild, last-frontier landscape include the Aboriginal rock art sites of Mirima National Park near Kununurra; Windjana Gorge National Park, reached via the small town of Fitzroy Crossing; and the amazing Wolfe Creek Crater - an enormous depression created by a meteorite.Air: To Broome or Kununurra
Practical: Best visited Apr-Oct, and rental of a four-wheel drive vehicle is recommended. Purnululu National Park closed Jan-Mar
Info: West Kimberley Tourist Bureau, Broome Highway/Bagot Road, Broome; East Kimberley Tourist Bureau, Coolibah Drive, Kununurra; Broome Tourist Bureau (Phone: (08) 9192 2222, fax (08) 9192 2063); Kununurra Tourist Bureau (Phone: (08) 9168 1177, fax (08) 9168 2598 Hours: Daily, generally 9-4); www.ebroome.com/kimberley
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