A Game Old Dame

To reach Seven Spirit Bay we travelled north up the Cobourg Peninsula about 350 km east of Darwin. The Peninsula covers a land area of about 2,100 km².  It is virtually uninhabited country with a population ranging from about 20 to 30 in five clans living in outstations; the same language, Iwaidja, is spoken by all.

It is estimated that 250 Aboriginal people were living here prior to the arrival of Europeans, In the 1940s and 50s, the whole population was moved to nearby Croker Island. By 1974 the peoples were allowed to return and in 1981 the National Park was declared, leased from the traditional owners.

Garig Gunak Barlu National Park is a protected area on the Cobourg and some adjoining waters.

Arriving at Port Essington, we stopped at the Black Point Culture Centre located at the Black Point Ranger Station which seems a million miles from anywhere.  Exhibits showcase the rich history of Aboriginal people, Macassan traders and European pioneers.  Displays include traditional Aboriginal bush tucker, history and artefacts, evidence of Macassan trading and a history of the failed Victoria Settlement. A display on some recent history shows how an Indonesian fisherman was blown across from the Indonesian islands in his canoe, which is now in the museum.

Out timing at Black Point was short as it was critical we catch the tide. Seven Spirit Bay wilderness lodge had sent it posh new boat to take us across the Port to the glamourous  resort which can be reached only by boat or by air via the resort’s private airstrip. Port Essington is so big that apparently the British boasted it could hold all the boats in the world. After more than a week travelling through such remote country, the luxury of the resort was welcome.

But least you think it too friendly, there were warnings:

The Aboriginal calendar is not divided into the Wet and the Dry, as Europeans divide the weather in the topics. The indigenous people have seven seasons and each of the seasons has seven spirits. Presumably the genesis of the name.

The next day it was back to the boats as we travelled across the Port to reach Victoria Settlement; on a cliff overlooking a white sand beach, are the stone ruins of the settlement a small group of British marines called home from 1838 to 1849.

The Port Essington settlement was the third attempt to establish British sovereignty in the region. This outpost of Empire was meant to show every other European navel power, including the Dutch and the French, that Britain controlled the north of this land.  Aboriginal ownership to them, was and continued to be, irrelevant until the last quarter of the next century.

Besides establishing sovereignty, the British wanted to cash in on the trade route to Asia. They also hoped to benefit from the lucrative trade in trepang, or sea cucumber, which had brought Macassan fishermen from modern day Indonesia to Port Essington for centuries.

In October 1838, 36 Royal Marines, and a few of their wives and children, sailed into Port Essington. At its height 300 people are said to have lived here; ruins indicate  24 houses and a hospital.

The settlement was plagued by disease, and many marines unaccustomed to the climate or the landscape, died of malaria and fever. And yet it wasn’t until late 1849 that the settlement was finally abandoned.

The ruins of the settlement especially the old graves in a bush setting are sad, veering on the eerie.

Yet in the surrounding bush, there was beauty:

The next day in the resort’s new fishing boats we explored the mangroves of Trepang Bay and chased the elusive catch though not for sustenance.

Not only was there an elegant lunch spot prepared for us, the lodge boasts great culinary skills generally, the highlight being a degustation dinner.

Who would think that here in the remote wilderness, we would options like:

• cured fish, wasabi sorbet, soy meringue and pickled ginger; or
• kangaroo fillet, crumbed pork head, fennel and caper salad?

There were equally grand beef and chicken choices on the same menu.

The final afternoon we drove around the National Park looking for buffalo. Here there were bloodwoods, ironbarks and stringy gums as well as the palms;

Here also can be found Bypa, the mangrove palm in one of its 3 only global habitats.

On the final day of the Arnhem Land journey we waited at this remote bush airstrip = Seven Spirit Bay International – for the Cessna Gran Caravan  which would take us on the 45 minute flight across van Diemen Gulf to Darwin

And to Arnhem Land, I say farewell

The dreaded Covid-19 lockdown has opened up time for all those things I never got around to but meant to finish one day. It has taken so long to return to this blog I have mislaid my notes and rely on memory.

My discursive narrative does no justice to the rich cultural homelands where Australian First Peoples have lived for 10s of thousands of years. It is extraordinary to hear that here in Central Arnhem Land there are more language groups than in any other region in the world.

This part of the trip I travel west to Murwangi onto Barramundi Lodge ending up at Mount Borradaile, six days of very different experiences and different landscapes.

Perhaps I chose the wrong month to visit as this week coincided with the Gamma festival out of Gove plus a few funeral ceremonies so that many were away on sorry business. Added to that, the Art Centres were being run with few people because the upcoming Art Fair in Darwin and a print exhibition in Paris meant that many people who might have been in the galleries for discussion were not available.

Our first 2-night stop was at the elegant Murwangi Safari Lodge. (Murwangi was once a failed European cattle station and now under the control of an Aboriginal pastoral company).

From there we explored a corner of the 1,300 sq kilometre wooded Arafura Swamp an important Aboriginal cultural area.

The film, The Ten Canoes, the only film made in an indigenous language, was shot here and went on to win a number of Australian Film Industry awards. Unfortunately, because of sorry business or illness the local indigenous guides weren’t available but a guide from the camp took us to the swamp billabongs left when the Clyde River evaporates in the dry months.

He pointed out special flora used for food and medicine or for stripping and twining to be used for weaving. The Milkwood  was traditionally used for body paint or for preparing adhesive for rock art. And the pandanus here was used for basket weaving.

Grooves in the rocks showed where food had been pounded for thousands of years.

This country has two main types of  termite formations.There are thousands and thousands of termite mounds across the Top End. Termites came to Australia 100 million years  ago and were originally found at the tops of trees. Across the world there are 250 species of termite and 150 of them are found in Australia. Only 7 species eat wood and generally all are part of the natural cycle providing food for birds and insects.

My favourite was the Cathedral mound said to grow as tall as 9 metres and reminiscent of eerie and grand shapes from childhood stories.

The shorter Magnetic termite hills with the razor sharp edges and thin profile are also impressive en masse. Were life long enough, the study of termites would be fascinating.

Later we went boating and  luckily there was a generous twitcher with us who over the days took trouble to point out some of the hundreds of birds I sometimes glimpsed – including the jabiru, whistling kite, kingfisher, the blue winged kookas, egrets, brolgas and the tiny Jesus bird. This last is so called because s/he walks from lily pad to lily pad so that it appears to be walking  on water,

The next day we visited the Bula’bula Art Centre in Ramingining and I was struck, as so often on this trip, by how central these art centres are to the economic wellbeing and cultural preservation of local communities. While we were able to visit the Centre and look at some of the delicate, intricate work being created, here as in all other stops in communities, we were not allowed to wander into or around the townships – just into and out of the cultural centres.

On the road again driving west; by the road I noticed a sign saying we were passing a ceremony site and the fine for being there without permission was $30,000.

And there were palms:

Our next two-night stay was at Barramundi Lodge. The Lodge is apparently a premier fishing destination and indeed the next day loaded boats took off to cast tourist lines into the Liverpool River. Some were experts in the making and others landed their fish. I was hopeless and didn’t enjoy being so.

Some distance from the Lodge is the township of Maringrida home to about 4,000 people and servicing around 30 outstations. The catalyst for the town was trade. It was a trading post in the 1930s when local goods such as turtle shells were exchanged. By the 1950s people started trading bark paintings and a township developed.

The Maringrida Art and Cultural Centre, the Djomi Museum of traditional craft and history and the Barbara Women’s Centre were some of the highlights of the trip. To my delight I found that the 8-foot weaved piece in my Sydney hallway called The Mermaid, came from here. This intricate open weaving is the local signature style. Maringrida has produced a number of well-known artists. In 2004 John Mawurndjui was one of a number of Aboriginal artists commission by Musee de Quai Branly in Paris.

The newly opened Djomi Museum is a gem with some exquisite examples of traditional craft and culture.

Unfortunately, the Women’s Centre where some impressive stencilled fabric is produced was not a hive of activity for the women were off preparing either for an exhibition in Paris or the Darwin Art Fair.

The next day we drove to Mt Borradaile leaving green landscape for stone country. On the trip we passed a number of variations in landscape including some wonderful – and my favourite – termite hills.

Mt Borradaile was, for me, the highlight of the trip because of the wonder -full rock galleries.

The sunset cruise on Coopers Creek nearby was second on the list of memorables for the peace, the beauty and the birds:

birds

And, of course, there’s this fella and his mates…

Some of the country we walked through to get to the rock galleries

Mount Borradaile is a rock shelf 1.4 to 1.6 billion years old. In 1875, the first European explorer saw the castle rocks with their painting and parcels of bones wrapped in bark from the melaleuca.

In1975 Max Davidson, buffalo shooter, came across the spectacular art galleries. The Mount Borradaile sites are classified under the aboriginal Sacred Sites Act,1978.

Habitation in the catacomb caves range from 500 to40,000 years. We were told the white/yellow echres in the paintings could be 200 years old while the red ochres could be 40,000.

These galleries have the largest painting of the rainbow serpent (below) recorded anywhere.

It filled me with awe to see the ash from old, old cooking fires on the floor of the caves and the grinding stones that may have been in use thousands of years ago.

The final in the Arnhem Land blogs will be a short one – the last stop, Seven Spirit Bay.