A woman spent the night at a remote gorge after breaking her leg at a popular tourist site in an isolated part of WA’s Kimberley region. The woman, 52, was holidaying with her husband and climbing a ledge in the lower sections of Bell Gorge, 2,400 kilometres north of Perth, when she slipped off the edge at about 11:30 am on Sunday 30 June. Witnesses reported hearing the woman’s leg snap and hearing screams as she fell.

Witnesses rallied together and attend to the woman, prior to the arrival of emergency services.
But extra assistance was hours away due to the gorge, situated on the remote Gibb River Road, being nearly 300km from the nearest town of Fitzroy Crossing.

The Kimberley is a remote place and often requires satellite communications and it can take time to coordinate resources and safe rescue plan to be able to get people back to medical care.  It took about 1.5 hours for SES volunteers from Broome to reach an airstrip near the gorge. They hiked down to reach the location where they and a medical crew remained overnight with the injured woman. A helicopter was used to fly the woman to Broome for treatment.