Margaret River Wine Country to the Kimberley. Western Australia is so large that most visitors only ever see one corner of it. This August, we covered two; the wine country in the south-west and the rugged outback of the Kimberley, in a single, deliberately contrasting trip.

We started in Perth with a night at COMO The Treasury, still one of our favourite city hotels anywhere in Australia, before driving south to Margaret River. Three days here were given over almost entirely to wine and coastline: tastings at Vasse Felix, Leeuwin Estate and Moss Wood, a long lunch overlooking the vines, and an afternoon at Smiths Beach that reminded us this region does beaches as well as it does Cabernet. We stayed at Cape Lodge, which remains the benchmark for the region — degustation dinners, a still lake out front, and rooms that make it hard to get moving in the morning.

From Margaret River we flew north to Kununurra, and the trip changed character entirely. A scenic helicopter transfer delivered us to El Questro Homestead, perched above Chamberlain Gorge in country that feels genuinely untouched. We swam in the Zebedee thermal springs, cruised the gorge at sunset, and ate dinner on a cliff edge under more stars than we’d seen in years.

A light aircraft flight took us over the Bungle Bungle Range the next day, those extraordinary striped sandstone domes that look almost artificial from the air, followed by a ground tour through the formations themselves, weaving between beehive-shaped rock that’s been there for 360 million years. We finished with a flight further into the East Kimberley to a remote working cattle station, where the scale of the outback finally sinks in: half a million acres, crocodile-spotting by the river, and a night sky with the Milky Way laid out in full.

Two very different Western Australia’s, joined by a single flight. Margaret River for those who want their luxury with a wine glass in hand; the Kimberley for anyone who wants to remember what genuine wilderness feels like.