Kununurra, gateway to the Kimberley

On first glance, the tiny outback town of Kununurra, population 5000, is the last place you'd expect to rub shoulders with some of Australia's hottest movie stars. It's as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get, (3247km north of Perth, 512km west of Katherine, 1518km north-west of Alice Springs), but for a few months last year, during filming of Baz Luhrmann's Australia, that's exactly what happened.

Dusty Kununurra became a home away from home for many of the 400 cast and crew for more than four weeks in August and September 2007, including Nicole Kidman and her husband Keith Urban, Hugh Jackman and his family, and director Baz Luhrmann.

All would rent luxury waterfront properties along the banks of the Ord River, travelling by day to remote filming locations via 4WD, and even helicopter for some of the bigger stars.

When they weren't busy making movies, you could find the stars enjoying breakfast in the local coffee shop, the Boab Bookshop and Cafe; working out in the local gym (Urban); or shopping for supplies in the supermarket (Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness); or, in the case of Nicole Kidman, admiring the sparkling jewels at Kimberly Fine Diamonds. Kidman is said to have purchased several of the exquisite and unique local pink diamonds to give as gifts to her family and friends. Owner Frauke Bolten-Boshammer, who vacated her riverside home for director Baz Luhrmann so he could view the daily rushes each night in peace, gave her famous tenant a diamond-encrusted 18-carat gold boab tree-shaped memento as a good luck charm to wear at the Oscars.

The town itself looks set to get its own memento from the movie, with unconfirmed reports that the Faraway Downs Homestead set will be moved from its filming location on the real Carlton Hill Station to Kununurra as a permanent tourist attraction.

According the locals, Kidman and Urban, in particular, loved their time in Kununurra, feeling comfortable enough to wander the dusty streets (without the protection of their bodyguards), that were far away from the prying lenses of the paparazzi, which usually follow them everywhere (else) they go.

And what's not to love. The Kimberley's youngest town, Kununurra was built in the early 1960s to serve the Ord River Irrigation Project. But while the town may be young, the landscape around it is not. For most travellers, Kununurra is the gateway to the Kimberley, a remote and magnificent wilderness region of rocky mountains and deep gorges and waterfalls that cover the north-western top of Australia, between Kununurra and Broome. The oldest rocks in the Kimberley were formed approximately 2 billion years ago, and there has been so little geological activity in the area since, that the landscape has remained relatively unchanged, making it some of most ancient land on earth.

Kununurra, means "big water" in the local Aboriginal language, and Lake Argyle, the body of water created by the Ord River Scheme, is the world's largest man-made body of water. It's a great place to watch the sun go down with a glass of wine on a sunset cruise or to spot wildlife (the waters are home to an estimated 25,000 fresh-water crocodiles) and birdlife on a morning cruise.

You can also take scenic flights over the lake, which also take in the diamond mine and Purnululu National Park or the Bungle Bungles. The distinctive beehive-shaped towers of the Bungle Bungle massif are made up of sandstones and conglomerates; their alternating orange-and-black or grey banding creating a skin of silica and algae that makes the Bungle Bungle inaccessible unless you have a 4WD.

Back in town, there are several good art galleries. Visit Red Rock Art Gallery and Waringarri Aboriginal Arts for contemporary Aboriginal art in natural Kimberley ochres, collected and ground by hand in the traditional way. The European art tradition is represented at the Diversion Gallery where works by owner and curator, Nadeen Lovell, are shown here, alongside colourful pieces by a range of other artists, all inspired by the Kimberley landscape.

While there, ask Nadeen about her role in the movie. After overhearing a conversation that the crews were having trouble growing vegetables for a garden scene in the movie, Nadeen jokingly offered them the use of her lettuces. Early next morning, a truck arrived and within minutes her once flourishing vegetable garden was bare, carted off to be transplanted on the set, 100km away.

Baz seems to have repaid the favour by planting a boab in Celebrity Tree Park, where more than 150 visiting celebrities such as John Farnham, HRH Princess Anne, Rolf Harris and Harry Butler have planted trees as they passed through town. Baz's boab will take a while to grow as large as the ones in the movie however, which were either shipped in from the surrounding bush, or fake.

For more information visit www.westernaustralia.com.