According to an ABC News report, the protesters arrived at the Maret Islands, in the Bonaparte Archipelago, northeast of Broome, in boats and seaplanes, after which they hung banners on the drill rig.

Crocodile expert and conservationist Malcolm Douglas was quoted as telling the crowd the plant would destroy one of the world’s last great wilderness areas.

"We’ve come to the Maret Islands to protest because we’ve got the beginning of industrialisation of the Kimberley," he reportedly said.

This is not the first time Inpex has come under fire in the region.

Last month, indigenous leaders spoke out that Inpex was drilling in a Native Title area without permission.

But now the Kimberley Land Council has said it was willing to negotiate a deal with the company.

"We think that if done properly it can have wide benefits for the region," executive director Wayne Bergmann said.

According to Aboriginal lawyer and activist, Noel Pearson, the aspirations of indigenous people in remote Australia to establish a real and sustainable economy are being undermined by urban-based conservation organisations.

“Without economic development, indigenous people are dying on welfare dependency,” he wrote recently in the Australian.

“The only other solution to a real economy is wholesale migration to urban areas and the abandonment of their culture: to die in a miserable urban underclass. So which is it to be: no development and continuing the downward spiral of social breakdown, or seeking development that can sustain people on their traditional lands?”

Inpex, Japan's largest oil explorer, has chosen the Maret Islands as its preferred site for the estimated $6 billion LNG plant.

The company and partner Total hope to produce about 5-6 million tonnes of LNG per year from their Ichthys field.

Discovered in 2000, the field is estimated to contain about 9.5 trillion cubic feet of gas.