Broome to Bungle Bungle Tours

The Bungle Bungle Range lay unknown to Western cartographers until 1983, when a film crew surveying the East Kimberley captured aerial footage of 350-million-year-old sandstone towers banded in orange and grey. Within three years, Purnululu National Park was gazetted, and within a decade, UNESCO inscribed the site for its outstanding geological formations — conglomerate domes shaped by compression, erosion, and the seasonal rhythm of monsoonal rains that dissolve silica and deposit iron oxide in horizontal stripes. The name Purnululu comes from the Kija language, meaning 'sandstone', though European Australians called the range the Bungle Bungles, a corruption of 'bundle bundle', a grass species that once dominated the valley floors. The Kija and Jaru peoples have inhabited this country for more than 20,000 years, leaving rock art in sheltered alcoves and maintaining ceremonial ties to waterholes and gorges. Tours from Broome to the Bungle Bungle Range bridge 600 kilometres of Great Northern Highway and unsealed track, crossing cattle stations and spinifex plains before entering the park's southern boundary near Spring Creek. The beehive domes of the southern massif rise 200 to 300 metres above braided creek beds, their surfaces fretted into narrow chasms — Cathedral Gorge, Piccaninny Creek, Echidna Chasm — where Livistona palms cluster around permanent springs. The northern section holds Mini Palms Gorge and Frog Hole Gorge, accessible only by helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft due to the absence of maintained tracks. Geologists identify the formation as Devonian-age quartz sandstone and conglomerate, deposited in an ancient river delta and later uplifted, fractured, and sculpted by differential weathering. The dark bands are cyanobacterial crusts; the orange layers are iron and silica cement. Day tours departing Broome combine overland transfer with guided walks, while scenic flights from Broome or Kununurra compress the journey into 90 minutes of aerial perspective. The park enforces vehicle permits at 15 AUD per day, and all access roads close during the Wet, typically December through March, when flash flooding renders Spring Creek Track impassable. The dry season, April through November, sees daytime temperatures exceed 35°C, making early-morning arrivals essential for hiking comfort and photographic clarity.