There are places that stop you dead in your tracks. Places that make you put your phone away - properly away - and just stand there, mouth slightly open, feeling completely, gloriously small.The East Kimberley is that place and if you haven’t been, it needs to shoot to the top of your Australian travel bucket list.You realise just how ridiculously big the great southern land is when you spend five hours flying from Sydney to Perth and then another three and a half hours getting to the outback town of Kununurra - our home base for a few days.When we think of majestic, iconic Australia, Uluru tends to dominate our minds.But when you venture to the far north of Western Australia and Kununurra, it expands your horizons.This is ancient, untamed, ochre-soaked country is on a scale that is as dramatic and deserving of the spotlight as any icon on a fridge magnet.And with tourism one of the major industries here - 12 per cent of the region’s employment comes from jobs in the industry - it has over half a million visitors annually who spend over $500 million dollars per year experiencing the region.What to doA ‘Cultural Culinary Adventure’ hosted by Waringarri Aboriginal Arts - the oldest art centre in WA and a Gold Medal winner at the 2024 WA Tourism Awards - is where a Kimberley adventure should begin.Locals give you the lay of the land as they take you on a guided tour of the centre and the particularly striking artworks influenced by native Boab tree ‘nuts’. Boabs are a tree native to the Kimberley and the artisans here engrave them with traditional Miriwoong motifs. They also form the basis of exquisite ceramics.The art centre has a very cool experience alongside the indigenous-owned Blak Tapas cafe that sees you driven to a secret location and welcomed to Country by Miriwoong elders; treated to riveting storytelling; a didgeridoo performance at sunset and fed on bush tucker food - kangaroo, crocodile, wattleseed, saltbush and barramundi.Warm, generous and soulful, it is one of those experiences that sets you up and stays with you.Nothing quite prepared me for the Bungle Bungle ranges, seen from above on a scenic Aviair flight. The 300-metre rock domes, striped in beehive-shaped bands of red and black and formed over 350 million years, is a genuinely humbling experience and it’s here Bow River really exists, the river Cold Chisel’s Ian Moss sings about.The Bungle Bungle Range is inside the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Purnululu National Park and is one of Earth’s great natural wonders and I was surprised to be told that non-Indigenous Australians only discovered it in the 1980s.Fairly late considering the range was formed over 360 million years ago. Taking a flight like this is highly recommended as it gives you the total perspective of the enormity of the Kimberley.About 70km from Kununurra sits another of Australia’s great secrets - Lake Argyle which is the largest man-made freshwater lake in the Southern Hemisphere.Imagine Sydney Harbour, multiplied by twenty.When dammed in the 1970s, the water swallowed entire mountain ranges, creating dozens of wild, uninhabited islands. You can take a nature cruise; kayak past freshwater crocs (harmless, I’m reliably told); spot any of 240 bird species or simply lie back in the most coveted infinity pool in WA at Lake Argyle Resort (it is the most picturesque caravan, cabin RV park I’ve ever seen) where you stare out to, well, forever-land.Then there’s the Gibb River Road, all 660 corrugated, red dirt kilometres of it. At the Kununurra end, El Questro is the showstopper with palm-shaded Zebedee Springs thermal pools, the red corridor of Chamberlain Gorge and an extraordinary swimming hole at Emma Gorge.El Questro is a 700,000-acre wilderness property about 90 minutes (a 4WD’s only-zone) from Kununurra and we stayed for a night in safari-style, structured glamping tents at the exquisite Emma Gorge Resort and spent the day with the Ngarinyin people on their private cultural tour.Aboriginal culture here is profound in a way that genuinely shifts something inside you.Around 40 per cent of the Kimberley’s population is Aboriginal, making this one of the most extraordinary places in Australia to connect with the world’s oldest living culture.The enterprising and local O’Reeri family started Injiid Cultural Experiences and elegantly explained their Ngarinyin culture through history, traditional healing, dreamtime stories and their connection to people, place and identity.While on the Munbula River Cruise with them we floated down the calming and beautifully haunting Chamberlain River - no phones, no cameras, just us and the river - followed by a brilliant fireside session, immersed in indigenous culture.When night falls, you really need to do just one thing - look up.The Kimberley night sky is something that will make you feel like you’ve never actually looked at stars before. With the Milky Way blazing, ancient knowledge shared around a fire and a four-course dinner served under one long chandaliered table among red rock faces, we happily enjoyed it all at the 100 per vent sustainable Gourmet Camp Over Experience - a brilliant off-grid secret dining venture which, no wonder, has been voted the best tourism restaurant experience in the country. Sublime.On a practical note, aim to visit the Kimberley at the start of the dry season - April through October - when temperatures ease and waterfalls are still running strong. And if you can time it for May, like I did, the Ord Valley Muster is a brilliantly only-in-Australia event.Kimberley food, traditional corroboree and a moonlit concert under those extraordinary stars. Every May, Kununurra hosts a 10-day celebration of music, culture an community set against one of the most jaw-dropping natural backdrops on earth. This year marked its 25th anniversary, and it went off, culminating in an outdoor, black tieArgyle Pink Diamonds dinner - open to everyone - and featuring Tina Arena, Boy & Bearand Budjerah. Sensational!I’ll be honest. I thought I knew this country. I was wrong. Standing on top of Kelly’s KnobLookout in Kununurra, watching ancient red earth roll out in every direction toward ranges that have existed for a billion years, I felt genuinely small. Not in a bad way.The Kimberley has a way of making everywhere else feel slightly ordinary by comparison. Go see it for yourself.Melissa Hoyer is a freelance journalist. She travelled as a guest of Tourism Western Australia