Halls Creek

Halls Creek is a small town with a very big neighbourhood. Sit on the verandah of the Kimberley Hotel at sunset and the country in front of you stretches more than six hundred kilometres in every direction before it touches another sealed road. The town itself holds about fifteen hundred people on Jaru, Kija and Gooniyandi country, but what most travellers come for is the country around it — the Bungle Bungle Range two hours north, the Wolfe Creek meteorite crater two and a half hours south, and the strange near-vertical quartz ridge of the China Wall just a few minutes east of the main street.

Our writer Tess drove the Great Northern Highway from Broome through to Kununurra in late June and used Halls Creek as a base for the better part of a week. What surprised her most was how much of the heavy lifting in the central Kimberley happens from this one town. If you only count by population, Halls Creek is a dot. If you count by what you can reach from it in a single day’s drive, it’s probably the most strategically placed settlement between Broome and the Northern Territory border.

The Bungle Bungle Range and Purnululu National Park

The Bungle Bungles are the headline attraction and the reason most people stop in Halls Creek at all. The orange-and-grey beehive domes of the Purnululu massif were unknown to the wider world until 1983, despite Traditional Owners living alongside them for tens of thousands of years and pastoralists running cattle through the surrounding country since the 1880s. The range was added to the World Heritage list in 2003. The official park information sits with Parks and Wildlife Service WA and is worth a read before you commit to the drive in.

The catch is access. The 53-kilometre Spring Creek Track from the highway turnoff into the park visitor centre is high-clearance four-wheel-drive only, with multiple creek crossings, corrugations that will rattle a hire car to pieces, and a typical drive time of two to three hours one way. There’s no fuel inside the park and limited phone reception once you leave the bitumen. If you don’t have a proper 4WD and the experience to use it, the sensible play is a scenic flight out of either Halls Creek aerodrome or the Bungle Bungle Caravan Park airstrip just off the highway — an hour-or-so flight will buy you Cathedral Gorge, Echidna Chasm and the full sweep of the beehive domes without the suspension damage. We’ve listed the operators we know on the Halls Creek tours page.

If you do drive in, plan two nights minimum at one of the park campgrounds (Walardi or Kurrajong, both Parks-and-Wildlife managed, both bookable in advance during peak season). Cathedral Gorge is the most photographed amphitheatre in the country for a reason — the acoustics inside the natural sandstone bowl will make a small child clap their hands and not stop for ten minutes. Echidna Chasm at the northern end of the park is a one-kilometre slot canyon that’s best walked between 11am and 1pm when the sun finds the bottom and lights the walls bright orange.

Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater

South of town the Tanami Road runs out toward Alice Springs, and 150 kilometres along it is the Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater — Kandimalal to the Jaru — the second-largest crater on earth where meteorite fragments have actually been recovered, after Meteor Crater in Arizona. It’s 880 metres across and around 60 metres deep, formed roughly 300,000 years ago. From the rim track you can walk down into the crater floor, which is dotted with paperbarks growing on the small remaining pocket of fresh water.

The drive is rough — corrugations all the way, no fuel, and a final 20 kilometres that’s 4WD-recommended. Most people who can’t commit to the road drive see the crater on the same scenic flight that does the Bungles, which is honestly the way to appreciate the perfect circle of it. The crater shares its name with the 2005 outback horror film, which the local tourism people are still ambivalent about a generation later. Don’t mention it in the pub.

China Wall, Caroline Pool and Old Halls Creek

The three best short drives from town are all within half an hour. The China Wall, six kilometres east on the Duncan Road, is a natural sub-vertical white quartz dyke that runs straight as a ruler across the bush for several hundred metres at heights of up to six metres. It looks engineered. It isn’t. The geology is a hydrothermal vein of pure quartz that’s weathered out of the surrounding softer rock over millions of years, and walking the length of it at golden hour is one of those small Kimberley moments that’s a lot more impressive in person than in any photo.

Caroline Pool, another seven kilometres further along the same road, is a year-round waterhole on Black Elvire River with a sandy beach and good shade trees. In the cooler months it’s safe to swim — the Shire of Halls Creek post seasonal advice and we’d always check the Shire of Halls Creek notices before you get in. Sawpit Gorge a little further on is a deeper, narrower pool with red walls; both are popular with locals on weekends and quieter on weekdays.

Old Halls Creek is the ghost of the original town, the spot where prospector Charlie Hall sluiced the first payable gold in Western Australia in 1885 and triggered the WA gold rush. The original townsite sat sixteen kilometres east of where the highway now runs, and was abandoned in stages after the 1948 cyclone wrecked what was left of the corrugated-iron pubs and storehouses. There’s an old cemetery, a few sandstone foundations, the remains of the post-office mud-brick walls, and not much else — but if you’re interested in how the modern Kimberley settler economy actually began, this is where it started.

Aboriginal art and culture

Halls Creek and the surrounding country is Jaru, Kija and Gooniyandi land, and three of the most respected art centres in the Kimberley sit within day-trip range. Yarliyil Art Centre on the eastern edge of town represents Halls Creek-based Jaru and Kija artists and is open to drop-in visitors on weekdays. Warmun Art Centre, about an hour and forty minutes north toward Kununurra, is the home of the Gija ochre-painting tradition that grew out of Rover Thomas’s work in the 1980s and continues to be one of the most distinctive painting movements in the country.

If you stop at either, the etiquette is straightforward: photographs of artists at work are off limits unless you’ve specifically asked, prices are fixed and non-negotiable, and a fair chunk of what you pay goes directly to the artist rather than a middleman. The art centres are working studios, not galleries dressed up as studios. We strongly suggest visiting one if you have any interest in Australian contemporary art — the work is held by every major state and national gallery in the country and is far cheaper in the bush than in Sydney or Melbourne.

Where to stay

Halls Creek isn’t spoilt for choice and that’s the honest truth. The Kimberley Hotel is the local pub and the largest accommodation in town, with a pool, a beer garden that catches the evening breeze, and rooms that range from basic backpacker through to family motel. The Halls Creek Motel sits across the highway and is a few dollars cheaper. The Caravan Park covers powered sites, unpowered grass, and a handful of cabins; it’s the only option if you’re self-driving and need to plug in.

For Purnululu, the Bungle Bungle Caravan Park (off the highway just north of the Spring Creek turnoff) is the staging post for scenic flights and 4WD tours, and the in-park Walardi and Kurrajong campgrounds run May to October. Pre-book in school holidays — the park is one of the fastest-selling caravan destinations in Australia.

Getting there

Halls Creek sits on the Great Northern Highway roughly halfway between Broome (685 km west, around 7 hours’ drive) and Kununurra (370 km north-east, around 4 hours). The road is sealed the whole way and in reasonable condition outside the wet season. Air North flies into the Halls Creek aerodrome a handful of times a week from Broome, Kununurra and occasionally Perth — not cheap, but a useful option if you’re short on time. We’d also point Kimberley road-trippers toward our guides for Broome, Fitzroy Crossing and Kalgoorlie for context on what bookends this stretch of the highway.

Fuel is available in town at the BP and the Shell. The next reliable fuel west is Fitzroy Crossing, 290 km away. East-bound, the next is Warmun at 165 km, then Turkey Creek and Kununurra. Don’t leave a fuel stop on faith out here.

When to visit

The dry season runs from about May to September and that’s the only window most travellers should consider. Daytime temperatures sit in the mid-twenties to low thirties, nights drop to a crisp ten or twelve degrees, the roads are open, the rivers run clear, and the Bungle Bungle access track is graded and passable. The wet season — November through to March or April — brings extreme heat (forties most days), thunderstorms, road closures, and a closed Purnululu National Park. The shoulder months either side are unpredictable and a coin-flip for park access. If you’re flying in for a single week, aim for June or July.

School holidays in July are the busiest weeks of the year. Accommodation and the Spring Creek campsites need to be pre-booked weeks ahead during that window, and the scenic-flight operators run at full capacity. May, August and September are quieter and just as good weather-wise.

Eating and drinking

Halls Creek is small enough that the food scene is essentially the pubs, the roadhouse, the IGA, the bakery and a couple of cafes. The Kimberley Hotel does honest pub meals — steaks, schnitzels, fish & chips — and pours cold beer. The Halls Creek Bakery on the main street is the local breakfast spot and turns out good pies, sausage rolls and savoury scrolls; queue up early because they sell out by midday. The IGA stocks well for self-caterers but expect prices around 30 to 40 per cent above coastal supermarkets.

This is dry-community country once you leave the town boundary — large parts of the surrounding region have strict alcohol restrictions, and taking any takeaway alcohol into a dry community is a serious offence. Buy what you need in town, drink it in town or at a licensed campground, and leave nothing behind.

Why we keep coming back

Halls Creek is one of those Australian towns that doesn’t try to sell itself to you, and that’s most of the appeal. There’s no boutique strip, no signature Instagram lookout, no purpose-built tourism precinct. What there is, is a couple of pubs, a bakery, a couple of art centres, and a hundred-thousand-square-kilometre back garden of gorges, ranges, deserts and crater holes that most of the country only sees in photographs. Spend three nights here and you’ll cover ground that other travellers will spend a whole month chasing.

For more context on the surrounding region see our guides to Karijini and Exmouth & Ningaloo further down the coast. The Pilbara and the Kimberley make a natural pair if you’ve got three or four weeks and a 4WD, and Halls Creek is the geographic pivot point of the eastern half of the trip.