The The Gibb River Road is a 14-day, 1,400 km drive from Derby to Kununurra by campervan. A 4WD is essential - it's rated hard. Best in Autumn (Mar-May) or Winter (Jun-Aug). Budget from about A$2,500 per person, plus roughly A$420 in fuel.
Some roads you drive; the Gibb River Road you survive, and count yourself lucky for it. This 660-kilometre track of red dust and corrugations cuts clean through the heart of the Kimberley - one of the last genuinely wild corners of the planet, a country of billion-year-old ranges, tidal rivers thick with crocodiles, and gorges that hide waterfalls at the end of a hard walk in. Over fourteen days in a 4WD camper you’ll swim under falls, wade dark tunnels, ford the Pentecost, and fall asleep under a sky so crowded with stars it feels close enough to touch.
This is not a casual drive. It demands a well-prepared vehicle, a streak of self-sufficiency, and respect for a landscape that offers no phone signal and little forgiveness. Do it right and it becomes the trip you measure other trips against.
No reception, no bitumen, no schedule but the sun. Just you, a dust-caked 4WD, and a thousand kilometres of the oldest country on earth.
Why drive the Gibb River Road?
Because there is nothing else like it. The Gibb is a rite of passage for Australian four-wheel drivers - a journey into scale and silence that rewires how you think about distance and self-reliance. Every day delivers a different gorge, a different swimming hole cut from ancient rock, and the quiet thrill of getting your rig through terrain that turns soft-roaders back at the first crossing.
It’s also a lesson in slowing down. Out here you can’t hurry the corrugations, can’t summon a signal, can’t order in dinner. You cook on the tailgate, read the river before you cross it, and watch the Cockburn Range burn red at sunset because there is genuinely nothing else you’d rather do.
Coming prepared
The Gibb punishes the underprepared. Carry extra fuel and water, a second spare, a comprehensive first-aid kit and a satellite phone or PLB. Check road conditions before every leg, tell someone your plan, and never cross a river you haven’t walked first. Get those basics right and the Kimberley opens up to you completely.
Hire your campervan from Derby
From A$2,500 per person for 14 days. Compare the main operators:
Sort the essentials
The van, things to do along the way, and cover for the road - compare and lock each one in.
- 01Campervan
Hire a van from Derby
Book - 02Experiences
Tours & activities in Kimberley
Book - 03Insurance
Cover for your road trip
Book
Affiliate links - we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes the price you pay.
Day by day
1,400 km total · about 33.5 hours behind the wheel across 14 days.
- 1
Derby to Windjana Gorge
150 km · 2hFill every tank in Derby - fuel, water, the fridge - because the bitumen ends here and so does easy resupply. Pause at the hollow Boab Prison Tree, then rattle onto the red corrugations of the Gibb. By afternoon you're walking the dry bed of Windjana Gorge, where dozens of freshwater crocodiles lie motionless on the sandbanks beneath 300-metre limestone walls that were a coral reef when the world was young.
Highlights Boab Prison Tree · Windjana Gorge · Freshwater crocodiles
Stay Windjana Gorge Campground · from A$13/nightcheck availability
- 2
Windjana Gorge & Tunnel Creek
70 km · 1hTrade daylight for darkness today. Tunnel Creek bores 750 metres straight through the Napier Range, and the only way through is to wade - torch in one hand, the cold water rising to your thighs, eyeshine glinting where the odd freshwater croc waits in the shallows. You emerge blinking into the light at the far end, then return to Windjana as the walls turn molten in the late sun.
Highlights Tunnel Creek · Napier Range · Aboriginal rock art
Stay Windjana Gorge Campground · from A$13/nightcheck availability
- 3
Windjana Gorge to Silent Grove (Bell Gorge)
150 km · 3hThe Gibb starts to bite today, with a genuine 4WD track spurring off to the lookout above Lennard Gorge. Push on to Silent Grove and shoulder your daypack for Bell Gorge - the Kimberley's poster child, where a tiered waterfall spills into a deep emerald pool. Scramble down the last rocky pitch, drop your pack on the warm slabs and swim right up under the falls.
Highlights Lennard Gorge · Bell Gorge · King Leopold Ranges
Stay Silent Grove Campground · from A$13/nightcheck availability
- 4
Silent Grove to Manning Gorge
80 km · 2hA short driving day leaves long hours for water. Galvans Gorge sits a few minutes' walk from the road - a palm-fringed waterhole with a rope swing and ochre rock art watching over the swimmers. At Mount Barnett Roadhouse you pay your dues, then swim or pull yourself across the Manning River on the little cable boat before the 3 km trail to a broad, thundering waterfall.
Highlights Galvans Gorge · Mount Barnett Roadhouse · Manning Gorge
Stay Manning Gorge Campground · from A$25/nightcheck availability
- 5
Manning Gorge to El Questro
350 km · 6hThis is the big one - the longest, roughest haul on the Gibb, corrugations drumming through the chassis for hours. The reward is the legendary Pentecost River crossing: a wide, tidal ford with a rocky bottom and the Cockburn Range glowing rust-red behind it. Walk it first if you're unsure, then ease across and roll into El Questro, a million-acre station where the tap water and cold beer feel like luxury.
Highlights Pentecost River crossing · Cockburn Range · El Questro Station
Stay El Questro Station Township · from A$32/nightcheck availability
- 6
Exploring El Questro
40 km · 1hA full day to unwind in one of the Kimberley's great playgrounds. Sink into the palm-shaded thermal pools of Zebedee Springs at first light, before the day-trippers arrive, then hike the boulder-hopping trail up El Questro Gorge to its half-way pool. Save the walk into Emma Gorge for last, where a fern-draped amphitheatre hides a droplet waterfall and a swim you'll remember for years.
Highlights Zebedee Springs · El Questro Gorge · Emma Gorge
Stay El Questro Station Township · from A$32/nightcheck availability
- 7
El Questro to Kununurra
120 km · 2hThe Gibb releases you gently - a short run of graded road, then blessed bitumen, into the mango-and-boab town of Kununurra. Restock the van, do the laundry, feel the dust wash off. In the afternoon drive out to Lake Argyle, an inland sea so vast it bends the horizon, and take a sunset cruise as the water turns to hammered gold and freshwater crocs slide off the banks.
Highlights Kununurra · Lake Argyle · Sunset cruise
Stay Discovery Parks - Lake Kununurra · from A$45/nightcheck availability
- 8
Kununurra & the Ord Valley
60 km · 1hA recovery day earned by the corrugations. Paddle the calm, cliff-lined water of the Ord River below the diversion dam, or walk the mini-Bungle domes of Mirima National Park a few minutes from town. Splash across the wide sheet of Ivanhoe Crossing, stock the fridge and check the van over - tomorrow the dirt begins again.
Highlights Ord River · Mirima National Park · Ivanhoe Crossing
Stay Discovery Parks - Lake Kununurra · from A$45/nightcheck availability
- 9
Kununurra to Purnululu (Bungle Bungles)
300 km · 5hHead south down the highway, then turn off for the notorious Spring Creek Track - 53 km of creek crossings, jump-ups and switchbacks that take longer than the highway did. It's slow, low-range work, but as you drop into Purnululu the first orange-and-black beehive domes rise from the spinifex and the whole grinding day makes sense. Make camp at Walardi as the light goes copper.
Highlights Spring Creek Track · Purnululu National Park · Bungle Bungle domes
Stay Walardi Campground · from A$15/nightcheck availability
- 10
Bungle Bungle southern domes
50 km · 1.5hSpend the morning wandering the striped sandstone maze of the south. The trail threads between the beehives to Cathedral Gorge, a vast natural amphitheatre where a single hand-clap rolls around the curved walls for seconds. Push a little further along Piccaninny Creek and you'll often have the ochre domes entirely to yourself.
Highlights Cathedral Gorge · Piccaninny Creek · The Domes Walk
Stay Walardi Campground · from A$15/nightcheck availability
- 11
Bungle Bungle northern gorges
60 km · 2hThe park's north is all towering walls and cool shadow. Echidna Chasm narrows until you can touch both sides at once, the fan palms clinging to the rock lit briefly gold when the midday sun drops in. Mini Palms Gorge is the softer sibling, a boardwalk climbing through livistona palms to a rockfall lookout. Shift camp north to Kurrajong for the night.
Highlights Echidna Chasm · Mini Palms Gorge · Kurrajong lookout
Stay Kurrajong Campground · from A$15/nightcheck availability
- 12
Purnululu to Kununurra
300 km · 5hGrind back out along Spring Creek Track - somehow rougher going up - and rejoin the highway north with red dust on everything you own. Kununurra welcomes you back with a swimming pool, a proper shower and a cold drink by the water. The hard driving is behind you now.
Highlights Spring Creek Track · Great Northern Highway · Kununurra
Stay Discovery Parks - Lake Kununurra · from A$45/nightcheck availability
- 13
Kununurra: Lake Argyle & the Ord
70 km · 1.5hA last full day to drink in the East Kimberley. Cruise the sheer red walls of Lake Argyle one more time, watching short-eared rock wallabies pick their way along the cliffs, or float the Ord back toward town past pandanus and the occasional wary crocodile. As the sun sinks over the ranges, raise a glass to 1,400 kilometres of dirt survived.
Highlights Lake Argyle · Ord River · Kununurra sunset
Stay Discovery Parks - Lake Kununurra · from A$45/nightcheck availability
- 14
Kununurra & departure
20 km · 0.5hA slow final morning: hand back the dusty 4WD, or point it toward Broome or Darwin if the adventure isn't done. Grab a mango smoothie, wander the local sandalwood farm and let the scale of what you've just driven settle in. The Gibb has a way of pulling you back.
Highlights Kununurra town · Onward to Broome or Darwin