Banka Banka Station, also referred to as Banka Banka West Station as the caravan park/campground, is a working cattle station owned and operated by indigenous people. It also operates a caravan park and campground that is a welcome stop between the Devils Marbles and Daly Waters…

The station homestead is right on the Stuart Highway and and easy 217km tow from the Devils Marbles. The bloke that manages the camprground were very friendly and hospitable. Typical Aussie outback character…

We were given a prime van site close to the mudbrick bar… but still a fair walk from the loos! The site was quite large and right next to a boab tree. We later learnt that the two boabs were brought in an planted. They only occur naturally in the Kimberly region of W.A. and the north western side of the N.T. Beautiful trees none the less.

Banka Banka Station differentiates itself from roadhouse campgrounds by offering campers the chance to view the station buildings and some historic equipment in the sheds. The happy hour operates out of the historic mudbrick homestead building and often has live music around the massive fire-pit area. A number of campers used the fire-pit (more like a fire trough) to cook on the coals.

There are a couple of fairly docile bulls and donkey in the yard by the campground. The donkeys occasionally let off a series of incredibly loud ‘hee-hawing’ that takes you by surprise with its volume as it rolls across the campground.

We stayed two nights so that we could break up the drive and also talk a walk to the nearby waterhole and take in the view from the lookout. The waterhole was about 2km from the campground and a fairly flat walk through the scrub. We passed a number of old car wrecks on the track but didn’t really see anything in the form of wildlife.

Arriving at the waterhole we discovered that it was pretty low and not suitable for swimming. Still id a number of small fish living in it despite it slowly shrinkng. It’s amazing that these permanent and semi-permanent water holes can exist in such a hot dry environment. That fish live there is even more amazing.

After returning from the waterhole we trapsed up the hill behind the station to the lookout to see Banka Banka Station from above. We discovered that the lookout was a bit of a deception… Upon reaching the top you quickly realise that the lookout is actually a plateau that extends off onto the far distance behind the station, which is really more like a wide valley along the highway. We took the drone up to get a birdseye view of the station and the plateau behind.

We were told by the caretaker that there was a camel in the stock pen near the campground but having not seen one we suspect that this is a bit tourist leg-pulling to see if they fall for it by thinking that the brown Brahman bull is a camel because of the breeds hump…

All in all… Banka Banka Station was a really pleasant stopover and we imagine that you could easily stay three or four days earlier in the season with the nightly happy hour, fire pit and live music. As it was we were arriving towards the end of the season and things were beginning to slowly wind down as campers either header north or south for the coming wet season.