Berkeley River Lodge on the Kimberley's north-east coast.
Berkeley River Lodge perches in a magnificent secluded Australian landscape, writes Max Anderson.
Nick and Candice own a 24-store fashion label that's readily acknowledged as "hot". Not that you'd know it: the young executives look like they've been living in a dumpster.
"I don't think I've been out of this singlet all week," says Candice. "It's starting to hang."
A suite at the lodge.
But hot - yes. The temperature has been high-30s and you can write your name in the humidity.
It's the end of the Kimberley wet season, and at sunset thunderheads reliably bulge and strobe with lightning.
The waterholes are full - kohl-black eyes with luscious green lashes, sometimes weeping violently over rocky rims into the Berkeley River far below.
Freshwater shower in the waterfall.Credit: Max Anderson
Candice sinks into another sweet creek to try to cool off (probably the fourth time she's submerged her daggy singlet today), but husband Nick - in an equally grotty vest - has the restless nature of an unrequited adventurer. He knows, as we all do, that there's rock art in the torpid bush: glance under the right ledge, turn a lucky corner and you might stumble upon ochre figures dating back some 40,000 to 60,000 years.
"I'm just going to take a look up here . . ." says Nick.
And disappears through a cordon of spiralling pandanus.
Fishing in the river.
Berkeley River Lodge opened last year. It wasn't the best time to launch one of Australia's priciest retreats, the year when wealthy international travellers stayed home (again) and Kuri Bay (another super-remote Kimberley resort) failed spectacularly.
Yet here it is, an unlikely dab of civilisation one hour north of Kununurra on the north-east coast of the Kimberley - a luxury lodge experience that will cost most of us $1450 a person a night for a three-night stay.
On arrival, you're taken by open-top LandCruiser over a white beach. The reasons for your prodigious outlay are both in front of you and behind: behind is a float plane (it's the only way to get here); in front is a wilderness lodge that dares to make a statement.
The complex sits 65 metres up on a series of muscular coastal dunes, fashioned from gleaming tin into angular beacons. The 20 suites look like a squadron of silver hang-gliders, flying in the face of camouflaged safari camps and low-profile hideaways. The main building is a super-fortress of ceiling fans and sliding doors, a vaulted breezeway that looks over the gulf waters, the wide mouth of the Berkeley River and the drum plateau of Mount Casuarina.
These vistas are as lethal as they are sublime and will kill you in a heartbeat, but the lodge lays on remarkably urbane comforts that lull you into thinking you're lord of it all.
The pool terrace, for instance, is an airy lagoon of baby-blue innocence elevated before a sea of crocs, jellies and sharks. Chef Jimmy Ward - busy reducing a local sea-monster to macadamia-encrusted roulettes - is an ex-Bedarra maestro whose careful work would be at home in the laneways of Melbourne. Bar manager Pat Harrington likes guests to pull up a Starck-esque stool and challenge his cocktail-making skills.
The suites are small chips off the larger block, but similarly perched to enjoy river-mouth or gulf water views. They balance function and form, or more exactly, luxury and landscape: bed equals view, bathroom equals sky. Of a morning, when your Nespresso drains into your mug, you take it onto the little deck to contemplate your day or your life, (whichever is the more pressing).
In truth, the suites could be a fraction more apart, but this lodge has good-natured bones and the vibe is anything but arch. And besides, this is the Kimberley. Before long, everyone's singlet begins to hang.
Like the massive Kimberley tides, the days' activities rise and ebb on the whim of lodge guests. There's barra fishing in the steamy mangroves, or walking the beach to look for tracks left by last night's turtle hatchlings, or scudding north in the launch to find an island where dugongs reliably poke their noses above the water.
But the pull of the Berkeley is perhaps the strongest. It's a beast of a river, a wide thuggish thing rolling through red canyons that fissure and branch. No matter how much water we cruise over, the red canyons keep opening before us - the waters silent save for fish splash and bird call, the red walls screaming their solitude, bellowing that we know nothing of the secrets they keep.
From the water, the cliffs look like they're comprised of tottering red dice; when we alight at a bank and climb 50-metre screes to stand at the edge, those dice prove to be the size of trucks.
We tramp through spiky grasses and grevillea to cross a gurgling creek, stopping at a steamy rock overhang that flits with bats. A wall is daubed with an ochre wallaby and fishing nets; we regard them in the stale, earthy-smelling shade, sweat dripping from our noses.
Another cave with art further up the creek was found recently. A few of us head off to locate it but the thick vegetation, the webs of golden orbs and the cloying heat get the better of us. Instead, we sink into the rushing creek, cooling off on smooth stones while water massages our backs.
Although we're steered by the lodge guides, these trips always leave us feeling we're in barely charted territory. Manager Jodie Mott knows the feeling: she likes to tag along, to lend a hand when the champagne and canapes are being dispensed, and because she doesn't know what's out here either.
"We lease the area from a family of traditional owners," she tells us.
"But they live in Wyndham and haven't been here for years. We're all discovering it as we go."
The ultimate exploring machine is the lodge's helicopter, which guests can charter. Last year, a visitor from Adelaide was part of a group that found 20 galleries within two hours. She later sent photos showing extraordinary galleries of Wandjina spirits to the Museum of South Australia.
But it's early in the season and the chopper hasn't arrived at the lodge yet. Nick is still restless to find something out in the Berkeley Never Never and it shows. One morning, over breakfast, a departing guest uses the lodge Wi-Fi to check emails on his phone. Nick winces visibly, like someone has punctured the isolation and let in a swarm of business worries.
At least he and Candice have another day at the Berkeley River Lodge, another day to head off into a place where accountants and workplace relations and inventories haven't been thought of. Another day before they have to hang up their filthy singlets.
The writer was a guest of the Berkeley River Lodge.
GETTING THERE
Qantas operates daily services to Darwin from Sydney and Melbourne and daily onward connections to Kununurra with code-share partner Airnorth. Fares are around $900 one way.
See qantas.com.au.
STAYING THERE
Berkeley River Lodge costs $825 a person a per night, twin share, including all meals, ground excursions and drinks with meals. Fly/stay packages (flights operate Mondays and Thursdays) cost $4350 a person, twin share (three-night); $5175 a person, twin share (four-night); and $7650 a person, twin share (seven-night). The lodge is open from March 1 to November 30.
TRIP NOTES
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