Paying for a guide who doesn’t talk to you and leaves you alone in the bush? Yes please.

I’m kneeling on rusted rock at the base of a splintering waterfall in WA’s Kimberley, and my guide is walking away from me. The crunch of his hiking boots softens as the distance between us grows, until I can no longer see his knees bending over the golden grasses. Perhaps I should feel alarmed at this apparent abandonment in the tropical outback, way further from human life than a cooee will travel? But, no. Instead, I sense whole-body peace.

I’m the sole guest on a half-day Silent Tour, an Eco-Star-accredited cruise and walk experience where the usual reel-off of facts and figures, landmarks and species is consciously avoided.

“I like to leave guests plenty of time to use their senses to observe, and I try not to overload people with too much information," says Steve Stevets, a qualified nature therapist guide. He gives his guests permission to just be. No obligation to make conversation, be engaging, to entertain the other. It seems fitting in a place where the sense of calm is as big as the landscape.

Steve moved to Kununurra 18 years ago, not as a guide but as a dietitian. He’d followed his pharmacist parents into the health sector. “I taught people healthy lifestyles, but I realised 90 per cent of them had stress and that’s what influences their food choices," he says. Steve wondered what he could do differently. “I found when I was out bush, my stress levels came down. I looked into the science and there’s a ton of research on the benefits of being in nature."

I step into his take on wellness as I slide into his vessel, a quiet eco-electric boat that’s powered by the very waterway we’re travelling on. The Ord River’s hydro turbines churn water that snakes for 650 kilometres, providing green power for the whole of Wyndham and Kununurra. It feeds the cotton fields that seem to inspire the clouds in a giant, cornflower blue sky.

I get that much out of Steve, as I battle feeling quietly perturbed. My default is excited chatter, teamed with an inner-nerd hunger for data. It’s unsettling that the usual supply isn’t forthcoming. Yet as we coast beside a city skyline of blocky red rock – its facets crumpled like paper – the hush becomes easier and, eventually, freeing.

We glide into a leafy crevasse and hike softly through a pandanus thicket edged by reeds. A narrow dirt track serpentines this way and that, as a babbling brook emits tonal sounds like a saturated pipe organ. Butterflies and moths flutter from their camouflage like black confetti and a barking owl calls. Would I notice all this, normally?

We arrive at a spring known as Herbie’s Hideaway. Wading in, the 19°C water feels colder as my hot and humid skin cools. A 40-metre waterfall’s shards caress my face, and underfoot, it’s clear enough to see rocks. This is where Steve leaves me, drying off.

When he returns 10 minutes later, I’ve barely moved, staring in a state of awe, free from distraction. In today’s busy, expensive existence, we think we have to suck everything dry, wring out the last ounce of value, make the most of everything. But there’s another way. A silent tour might just be how we find it.

The details

Tour: Half-day Electric Ord River Eco Cruise, departing morning and afternoon. Tours are customisable and available for a maximum of four guests.

Route: Departing Lily Creek Lagoon in Kununurra and heading up the Ord River

When to go: Bookings are available all year, however it is very hot from November to December. Waterfall tours run from January to April depending on wet season rainfall.

Price: $330pp + $100 discount for direct group bookings of four people ($305pp)

Where to book: Silent Tours