Travel Guide Kununurra

Kununurra is a market town of around 6,000 inhabitants in the eastern Kimberley region, close to the border with the Northern Territory. It is WA's largest town north of Broome.Originally, the town was just a rural center for the huge cattle stations in the surrounding area. In the 1960s, to ensure that the Kimberley did not remain a totally unproductive land, the government decided to turn it into a vast agricultural region. A project to irrigate the Ord Valley was carried out in the form of the Diversion Dam. With its 100 km², Lake Argyle is the largest water reservoir on the Australian continent. Alas, cotton growing, followed by sorghum, then replaced by rice, peanuts and wheat, could not survive successive droughts. Although the last attempt, the planting of sugar cane, was a success, Queensland, itself a major producer, was immediately opposed to this competition. Today, Kununurra's inhabitants live in air-conditioned dwellings, hidden among the bougainvillea and scattered around the town.