The Wild West
There is still a place where roads run out and certainty gives way to scale, silence, and something else — something harder to name. For Michael and Kate McConachy, that place was the Kimberley. Twenty years ago, they arrived in Kununurra and never left. What followed was not just a move, but the quiet construction of an empire — one built not on hype or hustle, but on staying power, curiosity, and an unshakeable belief in the magic of the North. Through a portfolio of tourism ventures that span the air, land and sea, the McConachys have helped shape how people experience this ancient and cinematic place. But what sets their story apart isn’t the awards or accolades — it’s the humility. The sense of responsibility. The refusal to fake it. Because in the Kimberley, there’s no room for artifice. And that, it turns out, is the real luxury.
WORDS & IMAGES : Alice Armitage
From the moment I boarded the plane to Kununurra I couldn’t stop thinking about the Wild West.
Not the real one necessarily, but the imagined – the one that refuses to loosen its grip on the mind. Dust storms and dusk skies, men on horseback framed against impossible horizons, saloons and shootouts and that strange, slow code of honour. Even now, long after the frontier has seemingly closed we continue to long for it.
Maybe it’s yearning for a life ungoverned. The romanticised West is a place where rules are few and choices stark. Where people are stripped back to grit and instinct. Where meaning is carved out, sometimes literally, from the land. That kind of autonomy is seductive especially now, in a time so defined by digital noise, bureaucratic sprawl, and the polite paralysis of modern life.
Perhaps it's simply human nature to imagine ourselves somewhere else, somewhere raw, cinematic and unscripted. It’s not about cowboy hats and cacti, it’s about wanting a life that feels less domesticated.
While many think the Wild West has been lost, there is still a place where the dream lives on. The notion finds a visceral echo in the Kimberley, stirring the sense of vastness, of untamed beauty and bone-deep isolation. It’s a rare place that still seems to exist just slightly outside time – ancient, harsh, magnetic. Unlike the imagined, the Kimberley is real and holds the weight of more than 60,000 years of continuous culture.
I went north full of curiosity. I’d heard the stories of those who went looking for adventure and came home forever altered for the better – or simply stayed and chose to call it home. It didn’t take me much time at all to learn that to explore the Kimberley is to flirt with danger and awe in equal measure. It’s to imagine oneself small – dwarfed by escarpments, undone by scale – and somehow more real for having been there.
So how does the average man experience it? The answer to that question might just be Michael and Kate McConachy and the conglomerate of tourism-centric businesses they’ve built since first landing in Kununurra twenty years ago.
“Our first visit to the Kimberley was in 2004,” Michael told me one afternoon as we sat down for a chat in his office, tucked away from the hum of activity in one of his aircraft hangars. “I got off the plane, had a look around and I thought, oh, this is interesting. Seven days later, we left and had fallen in love with the place.”
A few tough years down south, brought on by the 2000s drought, made the decision easy. "We came to Kununurra and there was an abundance of water, enthusiasm, and a lot of young people doing very well. We got home, packed up the kids, the dogs and booked our one-way ticket to the Kimberley, and we haven't looked back since."
In the proceeding years, Michael and Kate have built a long-standing legacy of excellence and adventure with their incredibly impressive and multi-award-winning, Kimberley-based portfolio of tourism operations encompassing ten individual entities including;
Aviair – A regional airline providing essential passenger services and scenic flights across the Kimberley and Pilbara.
HeliSpirit – A locally operated helicopter company offering access to some of the Kimberley’s most remote and spectacular places.
Freshwater East Kimberley Apartments – Quality self-contained accommodation in Kununurra designed to give travellers a comfortable and well-located base.
Bungle Bungle Savannah Lodge – An off-grid lodge inside Purnululu National Park, offering simple comfort close to the domes.
Bungle Bungle Guided Tours – Small group walking and scenic flight tours led by guides with deep local knowledge.
Nexus Airlines – A new regional airline connecting communities across Western Australia with regular passenger services.
Kimberley Experiences – A travel planning and logistics service that helps visitors navigate and enjoy the Kimberley, with the insight of people with a deep understanding of the region and all that's on offer.
All of which I was lucky enough to experience first hand during my time up there, exploring the East Kimberley.
It’s hard not to notice that none of these businesses alone are for the faint-hearted – let alone at this scale. A person who wants to build businesses in the region is someone drawn to the edges – both geographical and psychological. It suggests a certain appetite for risk for, for complexity, for building in places where the rules are different and the pace isn’t dictated by clocks but by weather, culture and connections.
To want to do business – and to do it well – up here is to accept that success will look and feel different to anywhere else. Something that seems to have come naturally to Michael and Kate.
But none of this happened overnight, with each of the businesses we now see thriving having been created, revived, built brick by brick.
“Initially I bought a block of land up here with the intention of developing it. That land is now the Freshwater Apartments.” shared Michael, when speaking of how it all began.
“I’ve always been involved in aviation and not long after the apartment development was completed there was an opportunity to buy a couple of helicopters in town. Before the ink was dry on that deal, a much larger and established heli-business was offered to us. So we thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. We took it on and that business has grown into what HeliSpirit is today.”
It seems Michael's business building antics continued in a similar fashion. After a few years of injecting a bit of love and enthusiasm into HeliSpirit, a private equity firm approached Michael offering a fixed wing aviation business – Avirair.
From there the pieces kept falling into place. “I think that's the thing that we have done here, which is a little bit different. It's that we’ve taken a lot of businesses that complement each other and we’ve grown them together.”
This kind of success isn’t about scaling fast; it’s about staying power and endurance. It’s about knowing that legacy doesn’t come from what you extract, but what you contribute. It’s not just a commercial feat. It’s place-based entrepreneurship – the kind that doesn’t just lift the business, but the community around it. It also hints at a certain kind of vision; the belief that prosperity doesn’t have to be centralised. That regional Australia, and the Kimberley specifically, isn’t a problem to be solved, but a place with its own kind of power.
So how is Michael’s approach to business and connection to the region reflected in the experience he offers to his patrons? I came to understand that where challenges are big and resources thin, people tend to cut the fluff. What remains is the truest form of authenticity. All of which has culminated in Kimberley Experiences, the travel planning arm of the operation.
Built to offer others a way into the magic, Kimberley Experiences set out with the intention to not just package the Kimberley but to translate its spirit. And I came to find that spirit everywhere – in the expertly curated itineraries and epic scenery, but mainly in the people. “I see our team and our staff as our greatest asset. I often hear it's hard to find good people in the regions. I think we’ve proven that wrong time and time again.”
Michael doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who would have ever considered ‘building company culture’ as a business strategy. And yet, everywhere I went I was met with the long-serving, deeply committed staff telling their own story. There’s a quiet sense of responsibility woven through these businesses and the people that work amongst them. Not delivered with a heavy hand or in any way performative, it feels much closer to custodianship. Everyone I encountered seemed to carry a sense that if you’re going to show people this place, you better do it right.
It’s a sense that extends beyond the core businesses run by the McConachy’s and is also deeply seeded in the operators that they work in tandem with.
Like Jules, who – with her partner Tub – runs the Kimberley Coast Camp, officially the most remote residence in Australia. Originally from Sydney, Jules left her career as a marketing executive fifteen years ago to spend a season revamping the luxury fishing lodge. It seems she hasn’t quite managed to leave yet having fallen madly in love with the location and way of life.
Like Steve, who runs a small boat and 4x4 touring business. Whose knowledge and respect for the local environment and all that lives amongst it is surely unbeatable.
Perhaps that makes not only for a truly human experience – as with the Wild West – but also the truest form of luxury.
The Kimberley doesn’t trade in opulence, but in awe. In an era increasingly obsessed with access and abundance, this place offers something far rarer: seclusion, scale, and the thrill of the unknown. A private gorge landing. A still river at dawn. A dinner table set where no one else has ever dined. Michael and his team have built a business not on replicating luxury, but on reimagining it. Where remoteness is the reward and exploration is the indulgence. Out here, the true luxury is being reminded how small you are, and how good that can feel.
All I know is this: it felt like a home I’d never had. And I’m ready to go back.