Bec Sampi - Kingfisher Tours
“The way you see my Country is different to how I see it. Some people are amazed, because they only had an impression of Aboriginal peoples on the street.”
Head guide, Bec Sampi, Kingfisher Tours, the Kimberley, Western Australia © Tourism Western Australia
Gija woman Bec Sampi grew up in Woolah Country (also known as Doon Doon), a tiny outstation community near Western Australia’s World Heritage-listed Purnululu National Park. It’s a wonderfully remote place, nine-odd hours’ drive east of the Kimberley region’s tourism hub of Broome. This remoteness has informed Bec’s personality: her observational skills, her ability to connect with Country, her comfort in isolated, outback locations.
As a 13-year-old, she explored Purnululu’s curious landscape of red rock boulders and rounded sandstone domes during a cultural immersion trip with her grandmother. The pair camped in the bush, with Bec learning how to read hidden messages in Aboriginal rock paintings, find plants that serve as bush medicine, catch fish using spinifex grass, and understand cultural Songlines that reveal ancient, unmarked paths through the wilderness.
Kingfisher Tours, the Kimberley, Western Australia © Tourism Australia
Bec, a former schoolteacher who is fluent in the Gija, Wola and Kriol Indigenous languages, shares much of this knowledge on her tours of Purnululu, home to the extraordinary Bungle Bungle Range. As the head guide with Kingfisher Tours, she blends modern science with traditional education to provide fascinating explanations for how the formations in her homeland came to be, woven together with song and softly spoken truths.
Head guide, Bec Sampi, Kingfisher Tours, the Kimberley, Western Australia © Tourism Western Australia
“The way you see my Country is different to how I see it. Some people are amazed, because they only had an impression of Aboriginal peoples on the street. I see this as a reconciliation tour; you’ll see we’re First Nations peoples and we’ve lived through hard times.”
Listen to Bec talk about her tours here.
To find out more about the experiences that Bec leads, click here.