Angela Bell expected her two-week tour of the outback Kimberley region in Western Australia would give her a rich cultural experience, given Aboriginal history in the region dates back at least 40,000 years.

The 28-year-old communications manager paid $10,000 for a high-end trip through a reputable and well-known tour company. But she was left disappointed when it came to the Aboriginal history provided by her tour guide, who was not Indigenous.

“When he was giving us the history of Broome, he spoke about the town being settled by Europeans, but he didn’t go back in history beyond that,” Bell, who lives in Melbourne, says.

“That was when I first began thinking, ‘Hang on, there was a history that went back tens of thousands of year earlier than that’. I did start to ask the guide about the Indigenous history but didn’t get very detailed answers. I just felt we were missing out on so much history and cultural understanding. It was disappointing.”

To promote this Australian Indigenous history to both domestic and international travellers, the Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Council is working with Tourism WA to support authentic Aboriginal cultural tourism experiences.

The WA government wants to increase the value of tourism in the state to $12bn by 2020, and has said it sees Aboriginal tourism as being key to that strategy. The Kimberley, in Western Australia’s far north, is a natural area for their focus, with its rich Aboriginal history, endless coastline and mixed terrain of outback, waterfalls, beaches and gorges.

Though air travel to the Kimberley is pricey and travelling by road is time consuming – the drive from Perth to Broome is around 2,300km – once there, there is budget camping and caravan accommodation available through to high-end resorts. Regardless of budget, most people go to the Kimberley to see the stunning landscape, a mix of red dirt, white beach sand, blue seas and bush. And it is Indigenous people who know the best and safest places to swim, where to find lookouts with spectacular views, or where to find ancient Aboriginal rock art or footprints embedded into rock.

Despite these attractions, a report prepared for Indigenous Business Australia in 2015 found Indigenous tourism operators overestimated international visitor demand for Indigenous experiences. The report said, “Operators believe international tourists see Indigenous experiences as second only to Sydney attractions, yet less than 5% of international tourists cite Indigenous experiences as an activity they want to experience while in Australia”.

This is something tourism boards and tour operators across the country are working to change.

Bart Pigram, a Yawuru man living in Broome, has been running his company, Narlijia Cultural Tours, since 2015. He sees his work sharing Aboriginal stories, culture and history as “a massive responsibility,” and believes it is vital those stories are told by Aboriginal people.

“Narlijia means ‘no bullshit, tours authentically for you,’” he says as he identifies ancient dinosaur prints embedded in rock off Gantheaume Point beach to a group who he is taking on a walking tour. He says there is more to the Kimberly than the scenic flights over national parks, jewelry shops selling pearls, and pristine beaches.

“There is a lot of culture hidden behind the camels and the sunsets of Broome. My tours are about stripping back the gloss and sharing our history.”

Pigram’s ancestors were pearling workers and musicians, a heritage that has equipped him to be an entertaining and knowledgeable guide with a deep understanding of the best time to fish for threadfin salmon, or when the tide is right for hunting mud crabs.

For thousands of years before Broome was gazetted in 1883 and before the pearlers set-up camp in Roebuck Bay, Pigram’s ancestors were harvesting pearl shell from shallow waters and trading it throughout Australia for use in ceremonies. Aboriginal people also traded with the Macassan fishermen of Indonesia from the 1700’s, long before colonisation. After colonisation, Aboriginal people were enslaved and forced to dive for pearls in brutal conditions. Many died.

According to John Morse, a former managing director of Tourism Australia who now runs the Lirrwi Yolngu Tourism Aboriginal Corporation, tours like Pigram’s can help to promote reconciliation.

“Running a tour allows Aboriginal people to stay on their homeland where they are healthier and happier and tell their own story, and the feedback that comes through from the people who go on these tours is that the experience is a life-changing one that gives them a deeper understanding and connection with culture,” he says.

“It is so profoundly important as part of reconciliation process to allow Indigenous people to become independent, and they have so much pride in their work. For 250 years they’ve been told their culture is worthless, and all of a sudden people are travelling to see it, and truly understanding it is extraordinarily rich and fascinating.”

Building the Aboriginal tourism industry has been a slow process, Morse says, with challenges along the way. The remote nature of areas like the Kimberley in Western Australia makes travelling to towns like Broome and Kununurra expensive. Tours can also be pricey, and Morse encourages Aboriginal people not to undervalue their product, with commercial operators charging thousands of dollars. Tourists also need to understand that Aboriginal tour guides might avoid eye-contact – a gesture of respect, rather than disengagement, in Aboriginal culture.

Involved in establishing Indigenous-led tourism since the late 90s, Morse said tours were also sometimes cancelled for sorry business – when Aboriginal people travel to be with family and community and to take part in cultural ceremonies after a death.

“So it’s about arranging with another community to step in at those times through good communication and planning, and tourists also understanding there may be an alternative tour if cultural practices, which should come before tourism, do come up.”

One of the success stories is the Aboriginal-managed Waringarri Aboriginal Arts Centre. The art centre and gallery is in the heart of Kununurra, a town in the eastern extremity of the Kimberley Region and the land of the Miriwoong people.

Waringarri runs numerous tours led by Aboriginal artists and gallery workers, and all proceeds from art sales go back to local artists and into the gallery’s cultural program. On an art trail and sunset tour, travellers learn about Miriwoong culture before being taken by bus to the Mirima national park at sunset, where a group led by local elder Ted Carlton erupt into traditional song.

The gallery has been there since the late 1970s and gallery assistant, Helen Carlton, who prefers to go by her bush name, Bindii, says its success comes down to its board of directors, all of whom are Indigenous. The board ensures a balance is struck between protecting Aboriginal culture while promoting the region, and that the local community benefits from any initiatives.

“Anything that happens inside here has to go through our board and they sit down and make decisions about what happens,” Carlton said.

“We all have a vision to keep our culture strong and Aboriginal people employed. We never want to lose our art and culture, because it makes us strong. That’s how we run things.”

About 200km northeast of Broome on the Dampier Peninsula, Bardi man ‘Bundy’ runs Bundy’s Cultural Tours from Kooljaman at Cape Leveque, a remote wilderness camp owned and run by the Indigenous Bardi Jawi communities. A veteran of the Indigenous tourism industry, Bundy strikes a balance between maintaining culture while also running a successful business. He has a lifestyle that maintains many aspects of traditional Aboriginal life, and he has a close affinity with the Dreamtime stories of the Bardi.

Bundy shows tourists where to find bushtucker and how to use bush medicines, and can take them to the best spots to catch mudcrabs. He skilfully uses fire to show tourists how he makes the spears he uses to hunt for seafood. He knows when it’s dugong breeding season, when the tiger and hammerhead sharks are around, and when the time is prime for catching certain species of fish. He does this, he tells a tour group, by monitoring when the wildflowers are in bloom and the position of the tides.

“If you catch a fish at the wrong time, it doesn’t taste right. We use the flowers and the trees to tell us what to catch. When the yellow flowers finish, you get paper bark, and that tells you it’s the best time for bush honey.”

Bundy also knows where to find ancient fossilised human footprints which would go unnoticed and unappreciated without his knowledge of the landscape and sharp eyes. But he doesn’t allow photographs of sacred sites such as where the footprints are preserved – there have already been cases of people cutting out dinosaur footprints found in the Kimberleys and attempting to sell them on the black market.

“We want people to come and see this for themselves,” he says.

“We try to make people appreciate how long Aboriginal people have been around here.”

While Bundy has been taking people on tours for years, young people are being trained in the skills required to become leaders in the industry. It’s allowing them to stay in their communities close to family. Daisy Croker, a 22 year-old Miriwoong woman from Kununurra, is one of the region’s young people benefiting from the tourism industry.

She is experiencing her first season as a tour guide working for Bungle Bungle Guided Tours, where she accompanies groups through the world-heritage listed Purnululu National Park. The park spans 240,000 hectares and is home to the Bungle Bungle range, comprised of hundreds of orange and black sandstone domes that rise up to 300m high.

Originally, Croker applied for an admin position at the tour company, but was asked if she was interested in training to become a tour guide instead. It’s a role she has embraced. She helps tour groups to navigate through the stifling heat and into Cathedral Gorge, where the towering red rock forms a natural amphitheatre with natural acoustics.

“There’s a lot of questions about our culture I hope I can answer for people,” she said. “And I just love it, I love getting out and being outside. I don’t just get to teach, but I get to learn about other people and where they grew up as well.”

• The author travelled to the Kimberley courtesy of Tourism WA. There’s more about Indigenous tours in WA here.