Karumba sits at the mouth of the Norman River, 70 kilometres of sealed road beyond Normanton, the last stretch before Australia simply runs out of land. The town has two halves. Karumba Town hugs the riverbank where the trawlers tie up; Karumba Point, a few kilometres on, faces the open Gulf and holds the beach, the caravan parks and the famous Sunset Tavern. A 3.8-kilometre path winds between them through wetlands thick with brolgas, pelicans and grazing kangaroos. It was not always called Karumba. Early on it answered to Norman Mouth, and then Kimberley, before settling on the name it carries today.

Karumba runs on seafood. The Gulf banana prawn put the town on the map in the 1960s, and each season the trawler fleet still heads out into the Gulf after them, much of the catch sorted, cooked and frozen on board before it ever touches the wharf. Barramundi is the other prize - locals will tell you, without much modesty, that the best barra on the planet swims in these waters. At the Les Wilson Barramundi Discovery Centre, the only hatchery in the world breeding the Southern Gulf strain of the fish, you can feed metre-long barra by hand and trace the whole story of the Gulf fishing industry, from prawn biology to the lives of the trawler crews.

People drive a very long way for this. As evening comes, the caravan parks empty toward the Point, and a crowd gathers on the sand with cold drinks and folding chairs to watch the Gulf put on its nightly show. Because Karumba faces west across open water, the sun does not slip behind hills or buildings - it falls into the sea, flattening at the horizon, throwing molten orange and bruised pink across the flat water until the colour drains away and the first stars come out over the Gulf. There is no green flash guaranteed and no admission charged. There is just the largest sky you are likely to stand under, and the quiet of a town that has seen this every clear evening of its life.

The Gulf keeps two calendars, and Karumba lives by both. The dry season, roughly May to October, is when the town fills with travellers and grey nomads: the fishing charters run, river tours go out, and the road from Normanton stays open and firm. The wet season transforms everything. Monsoon rain swells the rivers and floods low country, the road can close, and the wetlands brim with water and birdlife. Those tidal estuaries are also home to large saltwater crocodiles, which is why locals fish from boats and jetties, not by wading in. Come in the dry for the charters and the crowds; come understanding the wet if you want the Gulf at its wildest.