Art & culture in Arnhem Land
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MARCHINBAR ISLAND IS about as far-f lung as it gets. Halfway between Darwin and Cape York, it’s the largest of the Wessel Islands, which extend 130km from northeastern Arnhem Land like a row of pontoons. From afar, the sandy curve of Jensen Bay on Marchinbar’s west coast looks deserted. But as we step ashore on a warm October morning, we see two sets of tracks leading up the beach, marking a pair of recent arrivals. “Some leg-trimmers,” observes natural historian Ian Morris, powering over the dune.
This is the sixth morning of our 12-day Coral Expeditions voyage from Darwin to Cairns and my fellow passengers and I take Ian’s crocodile euphemism in our stride. We’ve eased into the sway of Arnhem Land life, due, in part, to Ian’s jaunty sharing of local lore and fervour for all things natural. So we too follow the tracks – eyes wide open – to the crocs’ daytime hideout, Nguy Nguy, a secluded lagoon abuzz with birdlife darting through paperbarks. It’s also dotted with waterlilies by the thousand. And somewhere, amid their magenta f lowers, lurk an unknown number of the world’s largest living reptiles.
LIKE MANY OF the stops on this trip, Marchinbar and its freshwater oasis invite a closer look. Far from being a forsaken outpost, this northern coastline thrives as a leading edge. For many of us ‘southerners’, time on Coral Discoverer is a bridge to another Australia, hiding in plain sight. Each shore journey reveals homelands tied to strong strands of Indigenous life, a weave of people and place threaded with a history of human arrivals and land upheavals spanning 70,000-plus years.
The Wessels are a case in point. About 21,000 years ago, during the last ice age, these sandstone isles were a ridgetop overlooking a vast sweep of lowlands. Scrambling up the stone terraces around Nguy Nguy, it’s astonishing to think of a time when you could step off them and stroll to New Guinea. Back then, east of Marchinbar, there wasn’t a gulf, but a great freshwater expanse. Fed by New Guinea’s Fly and Strickland rivers, Lake Carpentaria once rippled across nearly 30,000sq.km. This lost world is no mere academic curiosity. Stories handed down by Arnhem Land and Cape York Peninsula elders carr y Indigenous memories of the lake. The communities here are clued up about the radically changing climate and, after 500 years of strangers in boats reaching their shores, used to that, too – from us cruising southerners to fishermen from Sulawesi.
The Yolngu locals have weathered the odd storm, too. In April 2006 Cyclone Monica tore into the Wessels with winds upwards of 350km/h. The most intense cyclone ever to hit Australia, it devastated Marchinbar, where, Ian recalls, “there wasn’t a green thing left”. As I duck and dive through undergrowth back to the beach, it’s clear the bush rebirth around Nguy Nguy continues apace. Yet Monica’s legacy persists. Mighty casuarinas that once shaded the dunes stand as skeletons against the sky. Nearby, twisted metal scraps are all that remain of a steel-frame house, the former outstation of the local Golpa clan.
The day before exploring Jensen Bay we dropped anchor, pre-dawn, near Elcho Island. Atop the Coral Discoverer’s sundeck a handful of us watched a big red lozenge of a sun rise behind the silhouetted island. Mist from an inland lagoon poured across the bay where terns swooped for fish. Heading ashore later, some Galiwinku community locals greeted us at the landing. Nearby, a family returned in their tinny from fishing, while other children splashed and laughed in the shallows.
This unruff led tempo continued at the headland headquarters of Elcho Island Arts. After welcome music from yidaki (didgeridoo) player Nelson Yunupingu, we chatted with elders Jane Garrutju and husband Gali Yalkarriwuy. Our party was later treated to performances by Saltwater Band singer Manuel
Dhurrkay and the young rainbow dancers. In between we enjoyed local artworks: Judy Mannay’s resplendent Worrwurr (owl) figures carved from milkwood, traditional bark paintings, and feathered ceremonial Banumbirr (Morning Star Poles).
In their understated way, the artists conveyed the pulse of Yolngu cultural life. These rhythms have global reach. The famed Saltwater Band helped propel the phenomenal music career of the late Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. (Elcho also inspired the anthemic Neil Murray song ‘My Island Home’.) The island’s artists are among Arnhem Land’s most esteemed, their work avidly collected here and internationally. This creative output is less about individual expression than upholding ancestral stories and beliefs, which brings order and knowledge. With that clarity comes resilience to help ride out a choppy world of change, be it the annual seasonal rollercoaster, a cyclone’s havoc or the incursions of 21st-century life.
Ian Morris, a former teacher on Elcho, rejoices in f ive-decade-strong island connections. “Kinship is the keys to the kingdom,” he explains. “Everything in the Aboriginal universe is divided into two categories called moieties.” Within this, obligations to the land are inherited from your father; social responsibilities pass down from your mother. “Yolngu are brought up to be tuned in to what’s around them,” Ian says. “People are tied to the land; the land owns them. Their whole life is geared to knowing what’s ahead and when to be where.” We saw this uncanny awareness right across the Top End. On the Tiwi Islands, three guides ushered us around Wurrumiyanga township. With great humour they conjured a seamless world buoyed equally by tradition, art, Christianity and Aussie Rules footy. Later, Maningrida fibre artists Doreen Jinggarrabarra and Freda Wayartja Ali used pandanus leaves and kurrajong bark for bush string and weaving material. The exquisite baskets and mats they create bear cultural heft, bundled with time-honoured skills and sturdy allegiance to countr y that projects far beyond the mainland.
The sha l low- d ra f t Coral Discove re r does coast-hugging with f lair. All week we’d had intimate glimpses of the Yolngu maritime realm, an elaborate shoreline of low-slung islands, remote beaches and long peninsulas cloaked in woodland. Often
this seemingly limitless estate had an almost ethereal air. Under huge skies, gauzy with tropical cloud, the coast wavered on the horizon. In these moments we began to appreciate the journey-making gifts buried in the storytelling of the Saltwater People, their priceless ancestral knowledge of wind and tide, stars and moon.
By sunrise on Day 7, Cape Wessel was far behind. Another day’s sailing away, Cape York awaited. Our ever-alert expedition leader Steve Cox had been preparing us for a possibly bumpy ride. But by Gulf standards, our crossing was smooth – perfect for Cairns-based restaurateur Craig Squires to wield his big knife preparing chilli crab in the dining room. A long-time bush-food advocate, his cooking presentations as guest chef on this voyage showcased a myriad of Aussie ingredients, from lemon myrtle and f inger limes to samphire and pepper leaf. Apart from the chance for passengers to tuck into Craig’s signature dishes – the wattle-seed and macadamia pavlova was a notable hit – his affable pitch for Indigenous, sustainable ingredients chimed well with our trip’s take on place and culture.
WITH 35 YEARS OF cr uising exper ience, Coral Expeditions is renowned for encouraging Australians to embrace their remotest shores. There’s more to this than compact, well-equipped vessels. These voyages are carefully curated. Daily onshore excursions are bolstered by insightful interpretation and the hospitality ethos onboard is ref ined yet relaxed. Importantly, for Ian Morris, small-group cruises are also able to engage isolated communities, with minimal fuss and intrusion. “The beauty of this operation is we can meet the local people on their terms. We can also bring a bit of our economy their way. And they want our support and friendship; they realise they can pass on to us who they are.”
This strategy has garnered a loyal following. For the majority of my fellow voyagers, this was their second or third Coral Expeditions departure – and one couple had done no fewer than 11 trips with the company. Of these repeat travellers, most had kicked off with the now classic traverse of the Kimberley coast. As one of these veterans noted: “The trip around to Cairns felt like the natural next step. It’s the best way to see this side of Arnhem Land, and Cape York had always been on the bucket list.”
Soon after dawn on Day 8 the Coral Discoverer slipped past Booby Island at the western entrance to Torres Strait. After so long in open water, it was not just the sight of highlands on the horizon ahead that jarred. Dropping anchor at Thursday Island, we were suddenly back in the up-tempo world of shipping traff ic, townscapes, ferries and jet aircraft overhead. More importantly, ‘TI’ ushered us into another, very different heartland of Indigenous culture. The island’s Gab Titui Cultural Centre evoked a long history of Melanesian seafaring that
“The beauty of this operation is we can meet the local people on their terms.”
continues to shape Torres Strait life. There are also brotherly ties to New Guinea, about 100km to the north.
That afternoon the ship pushed into a bullish sea breeze, bound for our rendezvous with Cape York. The view from up for’ard was nothing like the insipid school map outline of Australia’s apex. A tantalising line-up of islands, reefs and rocks f lanked us at every turn. By the time the shore party boarded the ship’s hardworking tender, the Explorer, anticipation levels were sky-high.
From the lee of York Island we eased through whirling cross-currents to granite terraces at the Cape’s doorstep. This was no ordinary landing. For many, the twilight rock scramble to the legendary tip of the continent felt like a pilgrimage. There was laughter, glasses of bubbly and tongue-in-cheek self ies by the sign, plus a quiet sensation of patriotic life-goals realised, shared at sunset.
For the next three days the Coral Discoverer tracked south through the labyrinth that is the Great Barrier Reef. After the Territory coast’s starry solitude, it was odd to see our path lit at night by a blinking constellation of lighthouses and channel beacons. No less surprising were the number of big ships sharing this passage along the inner reef. On this leg of the voyage it was clear we were navigating not just a seascape but a conundrum: encounters with sublime natural wonders set against the ineluctable impacts of the outside world.
A stopover at the delightful sandy cay of Magra Islet gave us a chance to fossick on the beach and appreciate the sanctity of these tiny outliers for shorebirds and nesting turtles. Yet even here there was a smattering of washed-up plastics and other debris, including the back half of a f ibreglass tender and an entire outboard motor.
Further south, Lizard Island’s lofty granite peaks, sandy beaches and fringing reefs were an irresistible spectacle. A few hardy passengers rose pre-dawn to scale the 359m-high Cooks Look for a peerless vista of the islands and reefs. Later, far more of us jumped at the chance to snorkel in Watsons Bay. Swimming among giant clams, corals and a mesmerising array of reef fish was unforgettable. But, as Anne Hoggett, director of the Lizard Island Research Station, reminded us, these reef ecosystems face dire threats from climate change (see AG 142).
Wherever the Coral Discoverer delivered us on this coast, there was always a larger historical canvas. For the Dingaal people, Lizard Island is Jiigurru, a sacred place where clans gathered for ceremony and to feast on f ish, clams and oysters. Their stories recall a time before the reefs, when the islands were hills on a wooded plain. Just before our Jiigurru encounter, this deep-time perspective had rippled through a day at Cape Melville and Flinders Group of islands, 120km to the north-west. These are the cultural heartlands of Danny Gordon, an Aboriginal elder who’d been quietly sharing his local knowledge with us since joining the ship at Thursday Island. While the Melville Range is dominated by a dark tumble of massive granite boulders, the islands are striking sandstone formations.
SAILING INTO OWEN CHANNEL, the skinny passage between Flinders and Stanley islands, the Coral Discoverer was dwarfed by steep ridgelines studded with craggy cliffs and outcrops. The place was Kimberley-like in its fearsome splendour. Up on deck, Danny was extra lively, as he pointed out special sites and favourite stone formations. As well as sharing his ties to both place and an ancestral past, he spoke of his work to involve a new generation of custodians: “I want to get the young blokes out here. We’ve got to look after this place. We’ve got to care for country like the old people showed us.”
Late in the day the Explorer put us ashore on the seaward side of Yindayin (Stanley Island). Here in the shadow of towering sandstone bluffs, Danny escorted us to a hilltop rock shelter, an ancient site for the Yiithuwarra. The back wall of this long overhang preserves one of the most extraordinary rock-art galleries on the eastern seaboard. Danny explained the manylayered ochre images of turtles, f ish, dugongs and crocodiles, as well as intriguing depictions of sailing vessels and other craft.
He talked too of the families who’d lived here and the elders who fought a troubled sea of change to maintain connections to this world that sustained them. This moment, with the late afternoon sun streaming into the shelter, shed a glow on the living past while seeming to also cast its light back across the remarkable journey we’d all shared.
Further south, Lizard Island’s lofty granite peaks, sandy beaches and fringing reefs were an irresistible spectacle.