GONE FISHIN’
Max Anderson joins predators and prey in pursuit of barramundi at a luxury lodge in the Top End.
Sir Izaak Walton, the 17th-century author of The Compleat Angler, found piety in piscean pursuits: “You will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending upon it.” Clearly,
Sir Izaak had never been fishing for barramundi in the Northern Territory.
“Those of you fishing tomorrow, please be aware there are some very big crocs around at the moment,” says fishing guide Cameron Lambie. “They may look like floating logs, but those floating logs can ruin your day.”
There’s a ripple of laughter around the long dining table. The light is subdued and yellow, winking off wine glasses and cutlery. Outside, the night is black as oil, filled with the sounds of cicadas, frogs and a barking owl that keeps up a bizarre cry like a lost dog.
“We’ve had an excellent wet season,” says Lambie, “and once we get you among those gutters and inlets, you’ll have a good chance of finding big fish. But where you get big fish, you get big crocs.”
Somewhere, out in the surrounding floodwaters, I imagine five-metre salties are stripping the carcasses of victims taken at dusk. Buffalo calves strayed from their mothers, wild horses that were old or injured – snatched, submerged and dispatched.
The Mary River floodplain lies a hundred kilometres to the east of Darwin, on the edge of Kakadu National Park. When the January thunderheads drench the horizon, the rivers and creeks haemorrhage and drown a catchment of more than 8,000 square kilometres in waters barely a metre deep. Whole forests have their roots underwater, water lilies flourish and paddocks are visible only as an occasional fence post.
Then the water begins to drain into the Arafura
Sea – a three month “run-off” when the mud stirs and the food-chain becomes bloated with insects, frogs, small fish, big fish, bigger fish, crocs. It’s when the wilderness becomes voracious.
Bamurru Plains safari lodge sits alone in these hungry wetlands on a 303-square-kilometre buffalo station called Swim Creek. For several good reasons no one swims in Swim Creek, and the main lodge and safari bungalows are built on steel pylons.
“So,” says Lambie, raising a finger to count guests, “who wants to go out on the river, and who wants to go out on the floodplain?”
“What’s the difference?” I ask.
“It’s down to whether you want quantity or quality. The floodplain is all about quantity – if conditions are right you can be pulling fish one after the other. The river’s about quality. You won’t get the numbers, but that’s where the big girls are hiding out.”
“River!” says a guest raising his hand.
“River!” says another.
“River for us!”
More wine is poured and talk turns to the
“magic metre”.
At this time of year, the guests at Bamurru Plains are here for one thing: to catch barramundi, the fabled Territory fish that eats almost anything by sucking its prey into its mouth at lightning speed. But the anglers are particularly excited at the prospect of bagging a 100-centimetre barra, a trophy fish that everyone aspires to hold at least once. One of the guests says the closest he got to the magic metre was a 96-centimetre fish; another spins a tale of a monster, easily a metre in length, that got away. “She was huge!”
Why does everyone keep referring to barramundi as female?
“Barramundi start out life as male,” Lambie explains. “When they grow to 80 centimetres they turn female and start laying eggs. The magic metre is the holy grail for barra fishos, and any fish that big has to be female.”
“Can you keep them?”
“It’s strictly ‘catch and release’ at Bamurru for any fish over 80 centimetres. In the Territory, a boat fisherman can keep a single barra over that size, but most people will release them because they’re breeding age and you’re protecting the stock. Even your beer-swilling cowboy will do the right thing and put a big girl back.”
Not that there are too many beer-swilling cowboys around this table. These anglers have paid close to $1,000 a night for their adventure.
Lindsay is a retired judge from New Zealand. His conversation extends to Herodotus and human rights – but it’s barramundi that has him leaning forward in his seat to make a passionate case. “The thing about barramundi is this,” he says, placing his hands f lat on the table. “You’re fishing in heavily discoloured waters, so you can’t see anything. Then you get a ‘take’. And that’s when this big, shiny silver fish leaps out –” his hands take f light over the table “– and it f lares its gill covers, exposing bright red gills. Oh, they’re really quite magic!”
Another barra fanatic is a CEO from Washington State who has flown the last leg here by helicopter.
Her name is Patricia. “We were out on the floodplain today and we caught 42 barramundi,” she says. “It was just incredible fishing. I’ve been to other fishing camps, but nothing like this.”
Chef Made Mustika is at work in the kitchen, preparing Black Angus scotch fillet and ratatouille.
But the first course is something special: a platter piled with strips of barramundi fried in breadcrumbs, with a dipping sauce made from finger limes. It elicits a chorus of approval when it’s placed in the centre of the table.
“Get stuck in,” urges Lindsay. “We caught it yesterday!”
And right then, I know the fish I want to catch: a barra measuring between 55 and 80 centimetres, so it’s legal size, male and perfectly eligible for the grill.
“I think I’d like to try fishing the floodplain.”
Fishermen are notoriously secretive when it comes to revealing their sweet spots, but this fishing secret is worth sharing.
Since opening in 2007, Bamurru
Plains has become Australia’s answer to an African safari lodge set on Australia’s answer to the Okavango Delta. For six months, from the beginning of May, travellers come from all over the world to be cosseted in tented pavilions and immersed in an exotic ecosystem inhabited by a swag of marsupials,
236 species of birds and some very large reptiles.
This is Bamurru’s luxury season and it coincides with the Territory’s dry season. The days are generally bright and warm and the evenings are cool. The forest tracks behind the lodge are firm, allowing for dawn and dusk game drives. There are also quad-bike safaris, airboat safaris and a bird hide hoisted on a six-metre tower at the edge of a waterlogged paperbark forest. (Couples can sleep out in swags here, enjoying dinner by lamplight.)
For three months after the monsoon season, during the run-off, Bamurru Plains assumes its alter ego as a fishing lodge. From February to April, the floodplain is lapping the front of the lodge, the rivers are angry and swollen, and the tracks are boggy. The lodge food is a little less finessed and the 4WD options are fewer, but the lodge is staffed by licensed fishing guides and Bamurru’s river boats and airboats are loaded with specialist rods and gear.
And the secret? Those who visit Bamurru during the final fortnight of the fishing season run a good chance of finding the best of both worlds. The humidity is waning, the waters are receding and the tracks are drying. Better yet, the barra are still biting. It means guests can spend time grasping the complexity of the ecosystem on a safari (with morning tea or sundowners) before going head-to-head with the apex underwater predators.
I arrive at Bamurru after lunch when the fishing guests are out chasing quarry. The camp is fashioned from canvas, hardwood timber and corrugated iron, and finished with muscular details: chequer-plate steel underfoot, buffalo horns for door handles, and period photos showing just how tough the early buffalo farmers must have been.
Bamurru’s interiors are cool, calm and faithful to the idea of a bush camp. It’s about simplicity, natural textures and lots of light and air. Mesh walls admit the sights, sounds and smells of the wilderness; whether guests are under organic cotton sheets or a monsoon shower, the wetland is never more than a couple of metres away.
In the main lodge, guests gather to dine, drink and recount wetland adventures. There’s a help-yourself bar, fat wicker sofas and an open galley kitchen.