The impacts of recreation and tourism in the remote North Kimberly region of Western Australia

The environmental impacts created by recreational visitors to the wet-dry tropics of Western Australia raise questions about the type of visitor and the capacity of remote areas to 'carry’ increasing numbers of visitors. This paper looks at those questions in regard to some of the more remote natural attractions in the tropical North Kimberley region. Three locations—Cape Domett at the mouth of the Ord River, the Admiralty Gulf and the Mitchell Plateau—illustrate the differences between attractions, visitors, patterns of visitor behavior and their impacts on the local environment. As the highly variable nature of the Australian wet-tropics renders the use of conventional site indicators of carrying capacity difficult, an ecological alternative is proposed for research. The dominance of local and other Australian four-wheel drivers to the Kimberley and the impacts they create are shown to challenge the government's promotion of the region to overseas visitors and its notion of tourism as a sustainable industry.