The local Aboriginal people inhabited the area for thousands of years and have a dreaming story about the Rainbow Serpent forming the Murchison River as she came from inland to the coast. The first European people to visit the area were the crew of the trading ship belonging to the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia, who put two mutinous crew members ashore near Bluff Point just south of the town. The cliffs near the river mouth were named after another trading ship, the Zuytdorp, that was wrecked there in 1712. The area became a popular fishing and tourist spot in the 1940s and by 1948 the state government declared a town site. Lots were soon surveyed and the town was gazetted in 1951. Kalbarri was named after an Aboriginal man from the Murchison tribe and is also the name of an edible seed
