Perth to Broome camping road trip

Perth to Shark Bay

Use Cervantes or Jurien Bay for the first night and visit the Pinnacles outside the hottest part of the day. Continue through Geraldton to Kalbarri, leaving time for both the coastal cliffs and inland gorge lookouts.

Shark Bay is a detour, not a quick roadside stop. Base around Denham or a nearby caravan park for at least two nights if you want Monkey Mia, Shell Beach and Francois Peron country.

Ningaloo and Karijini

Cape Range National Park and Exmouth deserve several nights. Book national park camps early in the dry season and confirm water, shade and generator conditions. Coral Bay is smaller and often busy.

The inland turn to Karijini adds serious distance. Roads, heat and gorge access change with conditions. Stay at an authorised campground and carry more water than a coastal day would suggest.

Pilbara to Broome

Break the final run around Port Hedland or Eighty Mile Beach rather than forcing a very long day. Roadhouses can have limited hours, so fuel before you need it.

Broome is an easy place to stop moving for a while. Caravan parks book out in the dry season, particularly around school holidays and major events. Reserve before leaving the Pilbara.

Distances change how you plan

Perth to Broome is roughly 2,200 kilometres and the towns are far apart, with long stretches where the next fuel is several hundred kilometres away. This is the trip where range planning stops being theoretical.

Ten days is the minimum that allows stops at Kalbarri, Shark Bay, Coral Bay and Exmouth. Two weeks lets you add Karijini, which is the single best detour on the route and adds around 600 kilometres.

Book accommodation at Exmouth, Coral Bay and Broome in the dry season, because they fill with southern travellers escaping winter and there is no overflow capacity.

Ningaloo is the reason to go

Ningaloo Reef comes within a few metres of the beach at Coral Bay and Turquoise Bay, which makes it the most accessible major reef in the country. You can snorkel straight off the sand without a boat.

Whale shark tours run from roughly March to July and humpback swims later in the season. Both book out and both are weather dependent, so allow a spare day and book early in your stay rather than at the end.

Turquoise Bay has a drift snorkel where the current carries you along the reef. Get out before the sandbar at the southern end, because the current continues past it and swimming back against it is genuinely hard.

Karijini and the gorges

Karijini National Park sits inland from the coast and holds the best gorge country in Western Australia, with Dales Gorge, Hancock Gorge and Weano all offering swimming in deep pools. The park is remote and the roads in include unsealed sections.

The gorge walks are graded and some are genuinely serious, involving scrambling, cold water and confined spaces. People have died in these gorges, and flash flooding after rain is the specific hazard. Do not enter a gorge if rain is forecast anywhere upstream.

There is no fuel inside the park and the nearest services are at Tom Price or Auski. Arrive with a full tank, plenty of water and enough food, because the campgrounds are basic and there is no shop.

Season, heat and the wet

This route works in the dry season, roughly May to October, when the north is warm and dry and the roads are open. The wet season brings extreme heat, humidity, cyclones and road closures across the Pilbara and Kimberley.

Even in the dry, daytime temperatures north of Carnarvon are high and the sun is severe. Carry far more water than feels necessary, start walks early, and treat the middle of the day as time to be somewhere shaded.

Cyclone season runs roughly November to April in the north west. If you are travelling in that window, monitor warnings daily and understand that a cyclone will close roads and towns with little notice.

Shark Bay and the stops between

Shark Bay is a World Heritage area with the Monkey Mia dolphins, the stromatolites at Hamelin Pool and Shell Beach, made entirely of shells metres deep. It is a substantial detour off the highway and worth a full day.

Kalbarri sits between Perth and Shark Bay with coastal cliffs and the inland gorges including Nature's Window. The park closes tracks in extreme heat, so summer visits need an early start.

Broome itself deserves two nights for Cable Beach, the Staircase to the Moon on the right dates and the pearling history at the museum.

Karijini and Ningaloo both sit a long way off the highway, so decide which you are including before leaving Perth rather than trying to fit both into a tight schedule.

Places along the way