Best Walks in Broome: Red Cliffs, Cable Beach and the Dinosaur Coast

Gantheaume Point is the best walk in Broome and one of the more dramatic short walks in WA. The access road ends at a car park above extraordinary pindan-red cliffs dropping straight to turquoise Indian Ocean water, and the informal walking track around the point lets you explore the cliff edge, the rock platforms and — the headline — the real 130-million-year-old dinosaur footprints pressed into the Cretaceous-age reef flat at the base of the cliffs. At very low tide the original prints are accessible; at other times the carpark displays fibreglass casts of the originals. Either way, the walk around the point is one of the most visually striking thirty minutes on the Kimberley coast.

The red pindan cliffs are the colour that makes Broome distinctive — a deep, iron-rich crimson that intensifies at sunrise and sunset and looks entirely different from the bleached midday version in tourist photographs. Walk the track first thing in the morning, when the light is low and raking across the cliff face, and the whole headland feels like somewhere genuinely extraordinary. The lighthouse at the western end of the point adds a second landmark; the view south down the coast from the cliff edge shows you Cable Beach stretching away into the distance.

It suits confident walkers comfortable on rough, uneven rock — the cliff-edge sections and the reef-flat access are informal tracks rather than constructed paths. Families with older children manage it well; those with toddlers or in pushchairs are better off on the beach itself. Go at sunrise if you can, wear shoes with grip, carry water, and keep the children and the dog back from the cliff edges — they're real drops into real ocean.

Cable Beach is one of the longest uninterrupted beaches in Australia — twenty-two kilometres of white sand backed by pindan dunes and scrub, running north from the access point at the Cable Beach car park to the remote northern end — and a sunrise walk along its southern section is one of Broome's signature experiences. The crowds that define the afternoon sunset-and-camel-riding set are nowhere in evidence at 5:30am; there is just the sand, the sound of the Indian Ocean, the dune scrub, and a sky that goes from black to purple to coral orange in the half-hour before the sun clears the horizon.

The beach itself is flat, firm and completely navigable barefoot, which makes it one of the most accessible long walks in WA. The southern section around the access car park is where the camel-trek operators set up and where the patrolled swimming zone sits; further north it gets quieter and emptier the further you go. Dog-friendly sections exist in the northern zone (check current signage at the car park for the latest rules and boundaries). The tidal range here is large — at low tide the sand extends much further and the walking is firmer; at high tide the beach narrows and may be impassable in sections.

It suits walkers of all abilities — the flat, firm sand is manageable for almost everyone, including families pushing beach-adapted prams. The honest notes are practical: stinger season runs roughly October to May (wear a rash vest in the water), and swimming is only at the patrolled zone near the car park. The northern end beyond the camel zone is remote and unpatrolled, so walk with a phone and tell someone your plan if you're going beyond a kilometre.

Minyirr Park is the coastal park that sits between Broome townsite and Cable Beach, and it contains some of the better walking in town that visitors consistently overlook because they drive straight to the sand. The park protects the dune system and coastal scrub immediately behind Cable Beach, and the tracks through it — some formed, some informal — give you ocean views through the spinifex and sheoak, the birdsong of the coastal scrub, and a perspective on the relationship between the dune country and the beach that the sand-level view can't give you.

The walk through the dunes and to the beach access at the southern end of Cable Beach is a good twenty-to-thirty-minute alternative to the car park approach, and it rewards the detour: the scrub is genuine coastal bushland with seasonal wildflowers in the Dry, the track to the beach emerges at one of the quieter access points, and the birdlife — honeyeaters, waders, the occasional sea eagle — is active in the early morning. It's also the right walk for the afternoons when the beach is too hot and exposed: the dune scrub provides intermittent shade, the track is mostly flat, and you get the coastal experience without standing on bare sand in full sun.

It suits walkers who want something beyond the beach-and-car-park experience, families comfortable on informal tracks, and birders working through the coastal scrub species of the Kimberley. The tracks are informal in sections and the surface varies — not suitable for pushchairs — and the park has no facilities, so carry water.

Town Beach is Broome's bay-facing working beach on Roebuck Bay, and the foreshore walk from Town Beach toward the historic jetty is as good an introduction to the real Broome as any walk in town. The tidal flats here are enormous — at low tide the bay exposes hundreds of metres of red-brown sand and mud that supports extraordinary numbers of migratory wading birds, including some of the largest concentrations of shorebirds in the southern hemisphere during the northern-hemisphere winter. Even if you know nothing about birds, the scale of the spectacle on a good low-tide morning is one of the most unusual things you'll see in WA.

The foreshore path itself is flat and easy, running from the main Town Beach car park past the cafe and along the bay toward the old pearling jetty. The pearling history is tangible here: the jetty, the bay, the Japanese-influenced memorials and heritage markers trace the industry that made Broome what it is. The Staircase to the Moon foreground — the stretch of tidal flat that creates the famous optical illusion on full-moon evenings from March to October — lies right in front of you on the Town Beach foreshore walk.

One absolute rule: do not enter the water at Town Beach. Roebuck Bay and its tidal waterways are saltwater crocodile habitat — not a theoretical risk but a documented one, with confirmed croc presence in the bay and its connecting creeks. This is a walking and viewing beach exclusively.

Reddell Beach is the local alternative to Gantheaume Point — a shorter, quieter stretch of red pindan cliff and beach north of Chinatown that most visitors never find, because Gantheaume gets the guidebook coverage and Reddell sits on a side road off the townsite. The reward for finding it is one of the better combinations of cliff and beach in Broome, without the car park and without the crowds. The pindan cliffs here have the same deep-red colour as Gantheaume and catch the same extraordinary low-angle light at sunrise and sunset; the beach below is accessible from a short track down the cliff and gives you a swimming beach without the Cable Beach volume.

The walk from the access point along the cliff edge and down to the beach takes twenty to thirty minutes and covers easy ground — the track is rough in sections but manageable for most walkers with reasonable footwear. The beach below is not patrolled, and stingers are a concern in the build-up and Wet months, so save the swimming for Cable Beach's patrolled zone and come here for the walk and the view rather than the water. Early morning, when the cliffs are lit red and the Indian Ocean is flat and cobalt, is when Reddell is at its best and when you're most likely to have it to yourself.

It suits walkers who want the red-cliff experience without the visitor numbers at Gantheaume, couples and photographers looking for a quiet sunrise location, and anyone staying in the Chinatown end of town who wants a shorter walk without the six-kilometre drive.

The mangrove boardwalk near Town Beach is the most unusual short walk in Broome — a raised timber path through the mangrove fringe on the edge of Roebuck Bay that puts you inside the tidal forest rather than looking at it from the road. Mangroves are not everyone's idea of a scenic walk, and they shouldn't be: the appeal is watching the mud come alive at low tide, with mudskippers moving across the substrate, fiddler crabs working in hundreds across the exposed mud, and egrets hunting the channel edges. It is a different register entirely from the red cliffs and white sand, and it's one of the better thirty-minute experiences in town for anyone who wants to understand the ecology behind the postcard.

The boardwalk is flat and accessible, with a raised deck that keeps your feet clear of the mud and lets you look down into the tidal channels. It is most interesting at low tide, when the flat is fully exposed and the animal activity is at its peak; at high tide the water comes in and covers the substrate, the crabs and mudskippers disappear, and the visual interest drops. Check the tide table before you go. The walk takes twenty to thirty minutes at a comfortable pace, and there is enough to look at — the root systems, the tidal channels, the birdlife overhead — to slow most walkers down significantly.

One important safety note: the mangrove fringe and adjacent tidal channels are confirmed saltwater crocodile habitat in the Broome area — stay on the boardwalk and do not wade into any water at the edges, regardless of tide height or apparent depth.