Gibb River Road: Derby to Mount Barnett

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Derby

   Derby sits on a flat peninsula of mud and mangroves at the edge of King Sound, in the far north-west of Western Australia, and it is where the Gibb River Road starts. The tides here are among the biggest in the country, rising and falling about eleven metres, so the shoreline retreats for hundreds of metres twice a day and the water runs fast and brown. The town is small, with around four thousand people, and it has the dusty, relaxed air of a place that does a bit of everything: cattle, mining services, Aboriginal art and tourism.

   Read the complete Derby write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Derby is where the day begins. Next is Windjana Gorge.

2. 2. Windjana Gorge

   Windjana Gorge is where the Lennard River slices through the Napier Range in the west Kimberley, and the gorge walls are the remains of a Devonian reef, built by algae and corals when this country lay under a warm sea about 350 million years ago. Walking beside those cliffs you can see fossils in the limestone, shells and marine creatures, and the sheer scale of the place is humbling. The walls rise some thirty metres or more above a sandy river bed, which in the dry season shrinks to a chain of green pools.

   Read the complete Windjana Gorge write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Windjana Gorge comes up 228 km in. Next is Bell Gorge.

3. 3. Bell Gorge

   Bell Gorge is one of the best-known swimming holes of the Kimberley, a series of falls tumbling over red sandstone into a deep green pool in the King Leopold Ranges in the north of Western Australia. It sits well off the Gibb River Road, reached by a rough track of around thirty kilometres from the main road to the Silent Grove campground, and then a walk of about a kilometre or so over rocks to the top of the falls. The dry season, roughly May to October, is the only time you can sensibly get here; in the wet, the road is cut by floods and closed.

   Read the complete Bell Gorge write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   455 km in you reach Bell Gorge. Next is Mount Barnett.

4. 4. Mount Barnett

   Mount Barnett is a cattle station in the middle of the Gibb River Road, and a roadhouse that every rider on that road ends up in, whether by plan or by thirst. It sits roughly halfway along the Kimberley's famous 660-kilometre track between Derby and Kununurra, and the Aboriginal-managed station runs the store, the campground and the fuel pumps that let you carry on in either direction.

   Read the complete Mount Barnett write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Mount Barnett closes the day.