A Weekend on the... Mary River Floodplains
There’s plenty to do in the Top End (even when the barra aren’t biting)
NATURE’S arbitrariness spreads out before us on the 30-minute Cessna flight from Darwin to Bamurru Plains lodge: well-defined rivers, far from bursting at the seams, snake their way through a motley landscape that would normally be flush with greenery and water after the wet season. So we’re unsure what to expect at this barramundi mecca when we touch down on dry – very dry – land.
In response to this year’s unseasonal wet (October to April), which has forced Bamurru’s airboats into dry dock, the fishing lodge has devised an engaging itinerary of landbased activities, including quad-bike tours.
Bamurru Plains, just west of Kakadu National Park, is located within Swim Creek Station, where about 5000 head of buffalo roam – sometimes right up to the doorstep of your bungalow. Setting out on tours in a safari truck, we’re either bouncing along red-dirt roads, enjoying natural aircon in the 30-degree heat, or slowly inching behind wayward buffalo, eating their dust. Nature has been unkind to these cumbersome bovines, their short-sightedness giving rise to the uncouth habit of licking their nostrils to enhance their sense of smell.
Our guides direct our gaze towards blue forest kingfishers, soaring whistling kites and a regal white-bellied sea eagle guarding its lofty eyrie. Though the magpie goose – after which Bamurru is named – is a no-show, we spot many standouts among the property’s 236 bird species, including the pretty groundnesting rainbow bee-eater.
On a sunset tour to Mary River Billabong, the lack of water is as mesmerising as the long shadows cast by termite mounds that dot the grass-covered waterhole, evoking a “lost world” feel. Enjoying sundowners and canapés while imbibing the soft light, we admire a two-metre-tall mound that took
20 years to build, only to be taken over by ants when the termite queen died.
The water has also receded at Back Pond, where the airboats would usually be moored. On a morning hike, guide Harry Bezuidenhout scans the scene for crocodiles lying in the mud and feral pigs sleeping under logs as he leads our group through the paperbark trees. An estuarine crocodile lurks in a murky puddle, only its nostrils piercing the water’s surface.
The upside to these dry conditions is croc sightings in creeks and rivers, as the creatures can’t spread throughout the floodplains. “The Mary River system has the greatest concentration of estuarine crocodiles in the world,” says Bezuidenhout. During a sunset cruise on Sampan Creek, he angles the boat up to the muddy banks so we can look these prehistoric throwbacks in the eye. We get more than we bargained for: great snaps and a humbling reminder of nature’s supremacy.