El Questro Homestead

It is reputedly the most expensive guest suite in Australia. Yet any punter who booked the Chamberlain Suite at El Questro Homestead simply to rack up A$1700 worth of frequent bragger points per night would have seriously short-changed himself. As the most spectacular suite in Australia, it hangs 15m above its namesake Chamberlain River, allowing its occupants an eagle's eye view of the 400-million year old sandstone banks, plus a Captain Hook's look straight down to the crocodiles who nightly loll in the river below, patient and hopeful.

Defying gravity and crocs, you can sink into an antique bathtub that sits on the Chamberlain Suite's deck, there to contemplate the East Kimberley wilderness spread before you. Across the river you'll spot (depending on the time of day and tilt of your head) swooping eagles, bulbous 1000-year-old boab trees, flocks of noisy corellas or silent stars.

The homestead is the top-shelf accommodation in the huge spread of Kimberley country that Will Burrell and his wife Celia purchased in 1991. Versions of the El Questro "creation myth" vary but the one I like most runs: not-so-old Etonian Will goes bush, spots "probably the worst cattle station in Australia" (his words), pays the owner a million dollars for its 2000 head of scrub cattle. Owner throws in the million acres. Will does a muster and — so rugged is this country — finds they've actually got 7000 cattle. Do they quit while they're 5000 ahead? No way. Within five years the Burrells transform a blank on the Kimberley map to one of the top wilderness resorts in the world. "Up here you can run more tourists to the acre than cattle," quips Will.

The homestead's five other guest rooms have similar if less heart-stopping vistas to the Chamberlain Suite's. Each is individually themed, with the overall "Outback Bali" aesthetic featuring carved Indonesian bedheads, solar topees on the wall and huge, wanton beds that beg to be flopped on.

Wherever you hang your topee, you're soon drawn out to the homestead's broad lawn as it swoops down to a pool beside the gorge. But the great outdoors here mean more than quaffing champagne in the spa pool. The real thrills of El Questro are its excursions, by four-wheel drive, helicopter or shank's pony. At Zebedee Springs, for instance, stretch out in the 32C water, be massaged by its flow, dream up at an indigo sky through the canopy of palms — and try to name a better spa, anywhere.

You can hike ravines like Emma Gorge, arriving at a circular pool fed by waters plunging over a high cliff. It's like swimming at the bottom of a vast sandstone cylinder. My favourite excursion is with a ranger (he's known simply as Colonel) who takes us by boat up the Chamberlain River. Beneath a raw escarpment he first points out three Aboriginal Wandjina figures painted in ochre, then a set of more complex images, the enigmatic "Bradshaw" figures that predate the Wandjinas by some 17 000 years. The elaborateness of their adornments and the skill of their depiction have scholars intrigued and visitors like us entranced.

Homestead guests enjoy complimentary excursions such as a Chamberlain Gorge cruise, Zebedee Springs and half-day barramundi fishing tour. Other excursions start from A$75, with a half-hour helicopter scenic flight costing A$165 per person.

They leave the best till almost last — a helicopter flight over the Pentecost River and its ancient, inaccessible fissures. To take the brief journey from the homestead's svelte lawns and creature comforts to the billion-year old red bones of the Kimberley plateau is like witnessing nothing less than a jump-cut edit in Creation the Movie.

The homestead's prandial adventures cannot be ignored. They're so inventive and tempting that with our last lunch one of my companions sighs happily, "Arrive like a willow, leave like a boab."