The amazing striped 'beehive' hills of the Bungle Bungles are one of Australia's most spectacular landmarks, and a popular tourist destination in the East Kimberley, but where did their unusual name come from?

It's a question posed to Curious Kimberley by former Kimberley resident David Quin.

"I was interested to know what the term Bungle Bungle might mean even though, in the past, I had come across meanings for it, but it would probably be better if someone researched it properly," Mr Quin said.

When he lived in the Kimberley in the 1970s, he heard a story that the Bungle Bungles were named after a cockroach that would urinate on people.

"There's a word that people in the East Kimberley used, and it's a term for urinate, and it's banggul," he said.

"Banggul banggul is actually the term for a type of cockroach that you see up there, and if you provoke it, it will squirt urine at you."

The connection with the Bungle Bungles is that the cockroach has a striped abdomen or carapace that is reminiscent of the striped hills of the famed landscape.

The stripey hills of the World Heritage-listed Purnululu National Park are one of Australia's most popular tourist destinations. ( ABC Rural: Matt Brann )

Does the urinating cockroach theory fit?

It is an interesting theory that seems as if it could hold water, especially with Kimberley linguist Thomas Saunders confirming that banggul is an Indigenous word for urinate as well as the stripey cockroach.

"In a number of north Kimberley languages, including Ngarinyin and Worrorra, it means urinate or pee," Mr Saunders said.

But the urinating cockroach theory for the meaning of Bungle Bungles has a major problem: the stripey hills in question are not in the parts of the Kimberley where banggul means urinate.

"It's not the word for urinate in Gija, the language around the Bungle Bungles," Mr Saunders said.

A tourist's first view of the Bungle Bungles. ( Supplied: Tourism WA )

The urinating cockroach theory for the name of the Bungle Bungles is further debunked by Sophia Mung, a Gija traditional owner who works in the Aboriginal school on the edge of Purnululu National Park, the home of the Bungle Bungles.

The presumption that the name Bungle Bungles must come from an Aboriginal language was mistaken, Ms Mung said.

The origins of the name lie with the Bungle Bungle Station, a pastoral lease established in the 1940s.

"It comes from the white people who worked on that station, and they got mixed up with the type of grass that is out there," she said.

"That's what my old people told me."

Bundle bundle bungle

Bundle bundle grass is common in the east Kimberley, so named because of its tendency to grow in a clump, or bundle.

How bundle bundle became Bungle Bungle is open to speculation, but Mr Saunders suspects the European Australian name for the grass may have been borrowed by local Aboriginal people and changed to bungle bungle.

Then European Australians borrowed the changed name back again, naming the pastoral lease Bungle Bungle Station.

"It sounds like one of those rare place names which is an Aboriginal pronunciation of an English word," he said.

"There's many place names that are English versions of Aboriginal names, but this is one of those rare ones that is actually the opposite."

Bundle bundle grass is also known as curly bluegrass, and is valued as stock feed by Kimberley pastoralists. ( Supplied: Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development )

The Bungle Bungles have only been known to the broader Australian community and the rest of the world since they were featured in a documentary made in the early 1980s.

But they have been a significant place to the Gija traditional owners for tens of thousands of years and are known as Purnululu.

Spelt with a P, Purnululu is pronounced locally with a B, followed by a short 'oo' sound like the 'oo' in book.

"That's where they used to meet for ceremonies, initiation ceremonies," Ms Mung said.

The name Bungle Bungles is an unfortunate quirk in relatively recent history as far as she is concerned.

"I'd prefer it to be called Purnululu," she said.