East Kimberley tourism doing it tough

Tourism operators in Kununurra and the East Kimberley are more than 3000km from Perth but not far from the closed border to the Northern Territory — and doing it tough.

Limited and expensive flights, the closed border to the NT and the drive distance from Perth are making it an uphill survival battle.

While Colleen Quirk, at the Kununurra Visitor Centre, says “we in the East Kimberley are the most impacted”, she also stresses that Kununurra, some 60km from the border, is still open for business and there’s a lot to see and do. “We encourage people to the look at the Gibb River Road and come back down the highway. You can access the Bungles, Halls Creek, Fitzroy Crossing, Windjana Gorge, Tunnel Creek and Geikie Gorge. It’s a great loop to do.”

Across the region, many operators have decided not to open this dry season, from May to September — El Questro Wilderness Park and Home Valley Station on the Gibb River Road among them. Many who have opened feel they’ve been forgotten.

Shire of Wyndham-East Kimberley president David Menzel is deeply concerned it is too late to save this season and that many of the region’s tourism businesses, facing at least 18 months of negative cash flow, may not be around when things return to normal.

They close for the wet season from October to May and have to make their money in five months each year.

Mr Menzel says that the Government needs to recognise that COVID-19 has had different impacts on different regions. The pandemic has had more affect in the East Kimberley compared with a place like Broome in the West Kimberley, which is closer to Perth and has more flights. At the moment there are only three flights a week between Perth and Kununurra and a return ticket costs about $2200.

Charlie Sharpe, at Lake Argyle Resort & Caravan Park, chose to open, but says: “We would have been better closing our doors. We are incurring direct losses of up to $6000 per day at the moment, it is currently cushioned a little by JobKeeper but if and when that ends we will be in a pretty dire state.

“We chose to stay open because we are well supported by Kimberley locals and normally Darwin and Katherine is a huge market for us, and we did expect that by now they would have access into the Kimberley.”

A campaign to convince people who booked holidays in remote tourism areas to postpone their trip rather than cancel it was successful but it means about 25 per cent have already paid and next year when they come, businesses will have already spent that money trying to survive.

Although tourism ventures appreciate the decision by many to put those trips off, there is a feeling among some that it is merely spreading the pain over the next few years.

There have been calls across the sector for more support from the Government in the form of access to cheaper money over a longer term so that businesses have a fighting chance of survival.

Banks received $90 billion at 0.25 per cent interest from the Reserve Bank of Australia, to be passed on as affordable lending to small and medium sized businesses hit by the pandemic. Operators say banks are seeking between 4 and 7 per cent from tourism businesses needing emergency funding.