“Baruuuuu!”
We delighted in mirroring our colourfully clad instructors, shedding our inhibitions and dancing with childlike enthusiasm.
Franky Maliburr sings out across the lily-covered billabong. He waits for a moment. Then, wading into the water up to his calves, he again trumpets his people’s word for crocodile. “Baruuuuu!”
Silence. “He’s sleeping!” the wiry local guide announces with a grin. “Croc here, but too early for him,” he adds, sauntering with a chuckle back towards 20 eager faces.
It’s a mid-September morning, warm in the open but cool in the shade, with a powder-blue sky. I’m travelling with a small tour group across Arnhem Land, a 34,000sq.km portion of the Northern Territory’s north-east that contains some of Australia’s most remote landscapes. We’re on Outback Spirit’s 12-day Arnhem Land Wilderness Adventure that’s taking us, in luxury four-wheel-drive coach comfort, from Nhulunbuy in the east to the Cobourg Peninsula in the west.
This is an off-the-beaten-track adventure that’s taken the tour operation’s owners, brothers Andre and Courtney Ellis, and the Arnhem Land people years to plan. The brothers have a rare connection with the local Yolngu people, who have one of the world’s oldest surviving cultures and still practise traditions going back 40,000 years. The tour has been designed to be an experience brimming with outback hospitality, fascinating conversation, exceptional cuisine, ambience worth bottling and sublime safari camps set in unblemished scenery. Very quickly it’s proving to be a mind-boggling mix of captivating education and exploration that whets all the senses, igniting a love affair with an extraordinary people and their land and water environments.
Right now we’re deep in the Arafura wetlands and woodlands around Murwangi Safari Camp, near Franky’s home of Ramingining. “We use the land like you would a supermarket, hardware store, chemist and paint shop,” Franky says as he strips some pliable layers off a paperbark tree and shapes them into a water carrier. He tells us how heating chunks of earth from a nearby termite mound creates a simple bush oven and that the white oil from milkwood leaves has healing properties. Two sulphur-crested cockatoos holler from a high-rise paperbark perch. “They’re my ancestors making sure what I’m telling you is correct,” says Franky with a laugh.
Arafura Swamp (see AG 101) is one of Australia’s largest freshwater wooded wetlands: it’s 700sq.km in the Dry and 1300sq.km in the Wet. “This billabong will reach 3m [deep] when the thunderstorms hit,” adds Murwangi tour guide and assistant manager Phil May, who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of his outback office. “About 50m up on your left on those bare branches there’s a kingfisher having brekky,” he adds. “I’ve got a good eye for a young bloke, haven’t I?” he quips with a contagious roar as he tosses back his long, ashen locks.
During a 12-month period the area will support up to 300,000 waterbirds, Phil says, adding that it’s also a breeding ground for salt- and freshwater crocs and a thriving home for native fish, notably barramundi, tarpon and saratoga. It has strong cultural signif icance for the Ramingining community and is where the award-winning 2006 movie Ten Canoes, about a young Aboriginal warrior hunting in the wilderness, was filmed.
THERE ARE MORE THAN 16,000 Yolngu people here, comprising 16 clans all speaking a common tongue – Yolngu Matha. They are divided into two moieties, Dhuwa and Yirritja, and everything from nature to culture belongs to one of these halves. Whether it’s the opposing forces of hunting and nurturing or fresh and salt, Dhuwa and Yirritja are like yin and yang and govern all Yolngu life and relationship to country. Together they form Yothu Yindi, which means mother–child and is the most important underlying principle of Yolngu ancestral law. Traditional language, ceremony, songlines, dance, art and creation stories are diligently passed down by elders to ensure survival skills and culture remain strong.
We had our first taste of Yolngu ceremony back at the start of our adventure. In shady woodlands at Wirrwawuy (near East Woody Beach), on the edge of Nhulunbuy township, we found ourselves enveloped by the mellow strains of a yidaki (didgeridoo). Zelda Gurruwiwi told me how she grew up watching
her father play the instrument. “Bäpa always had a gift for creating that healing sound,” she said as her angelic face beamed during the wonderfully personal Welcome to Country ceremony we were being treated to.
Zelda’s father, Djalu Gurruwiwi, is the local custodian of the yidaki and world-renowned for his music. During the ceremony he sounded out a continuous hum on his instrument as his family, the Galpu clan, embraced us. We delighted in mirroring our colourfully clad instructors, shedding our inhibitions and dancing with childlike enthusiasm. Djalu’s face glowed as Yolngu and Balanda (non-Aboriginal) blended into one. “This,” Zelda turned to me and said, “is Bäpa’s ultimate wish.”
Dadaynga ‘Roy’ Marika, a member of the famed Marika family that helped launch Australia’s Indigenous land rights movement during the 1960s and ’70s, would also have savoured this moment. Later that day we met his wife, Djerrknu Eunice Marika, at Shady Beach, near the community of Yirrkala. A warm, spirited woman, she gently instructed us to remove our shoes and socks. We were about to have a healing session.
“Butjarinaning leaves heal all kinds of aches and pains, even wrinkles, after they’re boiled in water,” Djerrknu explained. She, her daughters and granddaughters handed us wads of wet, oily leaves and we rubbed them where we felt our bodies needed them. The women helped massage our necks, hands, legs and feet and then we sat, nattered and laughed like old friends. “A Yolngu girl learns everything from her mother, but especially her grandmother, and we encourage this unique grandmother-granddaughter relationship, or mari-gutharra, so our traditions can continue after we pass from this earth,” Djerrknu said.
YOLNGU ART OFFERS SPECTACULAR i n sig ht i nto the culture. Australian and overseas visitors travel to Arnhem Land specifically in order to buy artwork from places such as Yirrkala’s Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre and Ramingining’s Bula’bula Arts Aboriginal Corporation.
On the deck of Bula’bula Arts I find Mary, Julie, Margaret and Matjarra huddled in a nest of pandanus fibre and kurrajong bark. Matjarra, Julie’s daughter, explains. “They chopped down the trees, then stripped, softened, dried and coloured the string to make ceremony skirts, headbands and bush bras for an interstate festival,” she says. “Mum taught me these skills and how to survive.”
I watch the women use their bodies to create their artwork and notice Mary’s thigh is thickly calloused from her way of rolling twine on it. I also meet artist Philip Gudthaykudthay, who acted in Ten Canoes and works with a surgeon’s precision as he puts his single-haired, mangrove-reed brush to canvas.
Cross-legged by a window is Bobby Bunungurr. I fold myself in front of him and learn of his world travels as an actor, artist, songman, dancer and law man. “Law is the way we live,
Bobby says, his tone matter-of-fact but precise. “It’s how we’ve lived on the land and water for thousands of years. We can’t change law. Footprints can’t be changed.”
After a pause, he adds, “Black man and white man must sit together and share their story, then make one idea, one voice and one body. We can live together. It is possible to live in harmony wherever we are in the world.”
THE BLYTH RIVER DIVIDES East and West Arnhem Land. After crossing it we reach the town of Maningrida, home to the Kunibidji people. More than 100 clans live in the surrounding 7000sq.km. They speak up to 15 distinct languages, making this one of the most linguistically diverse areas, per capita, in the world.
The number of skilled and acclaimed artisans in Maningrida is astonishing. As a collective, the Maningrida Arts and Culture centre, which includes the Djómi Museum, has worked with 1000 artists during the past decade, including Yirawala MBE and John Mawurndjul AM.
Nearby, at the Bábbarra Women’s Centre, Maningrida’s creativity has been splashed in screenprint across a runway of vibrant cotton. The centre opened 30 years ago as a safe space for women and children and is now a f lourishing women’s social enterprise.
“Every one of our screenprinted designs comes from our ancestral stories, so it’s unique,” Jess Gunjul Phillips, the centre’s assistant manager, explains to me, as she f loods the fabric with paint. “Our beautiful textiles are sold and exhibited across Australia, in China, Berlin, London, Vanuatu and the USA, so our work is well known.”
Maningrida is also famed for the hundreds of kilometres of wild, untouched waterways around it, and it’s in this setting that the Tomkinson and Liverpool rivers and Arafura Sea become our playground for a couple of days.
At the Arnhem Land Barramundi Lodge, our head guide is the assistant manager, Andy Taylor. “Our focus is on catch and release, with 100 per cent lure-f ishing to access the many different species – including barramundi, the Holy Grail,” he says, explaining the lodge’s sustainable approach.
The lodge’s resident kookaburra sounds the morning alarm and sunshine f loods the safari camp as we prepare for a day of hunting and gathering – but not in the way our Indigenous guide, Colin Dudanga (pictured on page 9), is used to. “My country is Junction Point, northern banks of Liverpool River. We’re water people,” he says, as we board one of the lodge’s six boats. “My family, we use spears just like our ancestors.”
Colin’s eyes scan the water while Greg Patterson, our other expert fishing guide, watches the sounder. Colin casts and soon lands a sizeable barra. “That’s dinner!” shouts Greg. Colin is pleased. I ask him how often his family feasts. “Every time,” he says. “We watch out for crocs but we catch f ish every time.”
“Black man and white man must sit together and share their story, then make one idea, one voice and one body.”
FURTHER WEST, WITH the Liverpool and Goomadeer rivers behind us, we’re in ancient stone country and in the hands of Lachy Harrison, a tour guide with Davidson’s Arnhemland Safaris. “Mount Borradaile, the sandstone monolith that towers over this land, is 2.6 to 1.4 billion years old,” he tells us as he explains what ‘Davidson’s’ is about. “The late Max Davidson and Charlie Mangulda were great mates. Charlie saw Max as a blackfella with white skin and asked him to look after his country. They formed an exclusive lease and discovered many rock-art galleries out here.”
Lachy cranks up the safari truck and our introduction to this 70,000ha wilderness begins with a 800–500-year-old Rainbow Serpent. We gaze at the 6m-long image, trying to sense the intensity of the Indigenous spirit world in this living museum. Lachy shows us how this land can satisfy a healthy appetite if you know where to dig, pull, pluck and peel. He finds tiny bush potatoes and kapok bush petals that are surprisingly tasty, and we start to peck and prod at the ground like locals. At day’s end an orange sun sinks on the Oolinooli billabong, the local menagerie hits concert pitch and crocs peep above the water line.
We continue to the Cobourg Peninsula and through Garig Gunak Barlu National Park to Port Essington’s eastern foreshore, where three sleek boats wait for us. Just after pushing down the throttle, skipper Rob Robinson spies a f lock of birds, sets a rod, calls for one of the tour guests to hold tight and before long a generous Spanish mackerel lands on deck. Another f ive rods are set and the reels sing – a thrilling welcome to another stretch of Arafura blue water.
Later, from my bedside at the Seven Spirit Bay Wilderness Lodge, I can hear water lapping, emphasising a pervasive feeling of peace. But I know things haven’t always been so relaxed here. Close by are the ruins of the ill-fated Victoria Settlement, which was abandoned in 1849 after failing to survive the tough conditions of the outback.
THE LAST DAY OF THE tour comes far too soon. At the lodge’s private airstrip at the airport at Vashon Head, a Cessna 208B bound for Darwin awaits us. As we climb away and a bird’s-eye view of Van Diemen Gulf opens up before us, Arnhem Land tugs at my heartstrings. I sit back and let the impact of my journey wash over me. And as I revisit the events of the past 12 extraordinary days, I recall Dhuwa and Yirritja and their yearning for balance. With departure there must be arrival. I’m leaving, but I will return.