East Arnhem Land - the ultimate cultural odyssey

East Arnhem Land’s vast and remarkable wilderness is alive with indigenous culture, where a traditional way of life is thriving. Half the journey is getting there, like an ultimate Australian cultural odyssey, writes Steve Madgwick.

Camping in paradise: Dhuluwuy, north east Arnhem Land (photo: Elise Hassey).

A lonely squiggly line, like a toddler would draw on an Etch A Sketch, is about the only sign of civilisation in East Arnhem Land, at least according to the Land Cruiser’s GPS. But the GPS lies. In its defence though, without the Yolngu people’s local knowledge here, you are effectively wandering blindly around 97,000 square kilometres of inconceivably hued fecund wilderness without a paddle.

Central Arnhem Highway, Northern Territory

The Central Arnhem Highway, 710km of sheer adventure.

A seven-day road trip adventure

For seven days on Venture North’s debut ‘cultural safari’ through the rarely traversed East Arnhem Land – the Yolngu homeland and heartland – we bump and squeak along quicksand-esque tracks, past nonchalant herds of wild horses, buffaloes and donkeys.

We’re in search of a handful of positively microscopic communities, which even by Northern Territory standards are ridiculously remote. Our guide, Dave McMahon, who has bucket-loads of bush sense beyond his years, navigates.

From Darwin, we head through Katherine, skirt around Kakadu, then throw a massive dingo-leg north-east along the perpetual outback of the Central Arnhem Road.

We’re bound for the de facto capital, Nhulunbuy, the Gulf of Carpentaria’s western gateway on the Gove Peninsula.

We cross tawny rivers and crystal streams, which would have been idiotic to traverse even in a rubber ducky a few months later in the deluge of the wet season.

Monsoon forests and expansive eucalypt woodlands flicker past, filtered through the tinted glass of our air-conned Cruiser.

Bridge too far: River crossings are all part of driving through east Arnhem Land, even in the dry (photo: Elise Hassey).

Immeasurable acres of scrub sluggishly smoulder from ‘firestick farming’, the practice of torching the land to revitalise it and make hunting easier when game such as kangaroos move in to feed on the new shoots of grass. It’s a cornerstone of the traditional owners’ ancient conservation and hunting philosophy.

Each Yolngu community is its own ‘country’, as different from each other as they are from Australia’s big cities – with distinct dialects, complex cultures and unique ceremonies – yet inextricably linked to the next by ‘song lines’ that course along the landscape.

The Yolngu will open their doors and multi-millennial knowledge banks to us and in return we will have to open our minds to their ceremonies, dreaming stories, tales of struggle and their often-confronting bush tucker. Here everything is governed by gender, tradition, season and, sometimes it seems, pure whim. Come meet the people of East Arnhem Land.

The art of the pop-up ceremony

“They are watching us now," says Lazarus Murray. He stares dead ahead into the untamed bush, past dusky silhouettes of stocky cathedral-like termite mounds, seemingly at nothing. I can’t see anyone.

“The country speaks to you," he exhales and looks me directly in the eyes. “I’m over the moon we can share this with you."

Lazarus sits in a row of equally proud fathers, brothers and uncles on a woven pandanus mat on the earth of Bagetti Homestead outstation, 30 bouncy kilometres from his house in Bulman, not quite halfway up Central Arnhem Road. The extended Murray family are the traditional owners of all of this.

Lazarus has rallied Bulman’s young dancers, including his son, to narrate his homeland’s story. One by one, bush-bashed white Toyota Troopies pull up; Lazarus hears them coming minutes before I do.

The next generation perform their ceremony, Bulman, East Arnhem Land (photo: Elise Hassey).

A sandy circle raked clear of twigs and nasties becomes a pop-up bush stage. White clay and scarlet red costumes transform shyly giggling young boys into storytellers; glimpses of footy shorts underneath give an anachronistically modern twist.

Bulman’s daughters will dance today too, but strictly on the periphery of the circle – storytelling in this style is mainly men’s business. Lazarus’s eyes grin as he sharply cracks his clapsticks. A yidaki (didgeridoo) player sets the beat, its end sitting in a rusty tin: a bush subwoofer. The troupe of young storytellers circles slowly, imaginary spears in hand… the pace picks up.

The boys explode with screams when they land the mythical barramundi. Dust hangs ethereally in the dusk light that makes it through the growth. In-jokes and cackling giggles ricochet between the Murrays as each dance begins.

“We teach them this from the day they were born," says Lazarus. Two persistent kids drag me into the circle. I mimic their movements, appallingly. We become a whirlwind, circling around chaotically.

I rejoin Lazarus. Why have this gathering out here, so far from your house I ask? “A Dreaming kangaroo planted a sacred object just across the river there on its journey," he says. “It came from up in the islands and created all the country – rivers, billabongs. It makes this spot sort of like the White House of all the ceremonies in Arnhem Land."

While this ceremony is unique to this country, it is integral with song lines flowing through surrounding homelands. Bulman’s full ceremony is only performed every five years, and the young boys must first be initiated (at around 10), when their father or uncle deems that they are ready to represent the people.

“When anyone sees us with our paint they know we run the area – it’s sort of like our brand. Like Toyota has a brand," he says motioning towards the Troopies. “But way, way more than that!"

The outback megamall

“The old fellas used to wrestle crocodiles to eat," says Lazarus’s sister Cynthia. There is no punchline. It seems just about every plant and animal at Bagetti, except for clan totems, is on the menu – ‘seasonal’ out here is an essential, ancient philosophy.

The extended family relax on a shady finger of land that juts into the Wilton River, perilously close to the ‘sacred’ side of the river – a definite no-go for balanda (white fellas) like me, as I’ve been reminded at least three times.

Spear fishing Bagetti Homestead east Arnhem Land

Spear fishing lesson, Bagetti Homestead, east Arnhem Land (photo: Elise Hassey).

Freshly butchered buffalo ribs hiss on the open grill – last night’s hunting bounty. One of the men catches a watermelon-sized turtle and prepares it unceremoniously on the spot – with a snap of the neck – and plops it straight into the coals.

We spear for mud cod at a nearby natural spring enclosed by fulsome pandanus palms that make it feel otherworldly, closer to a children’s book illustration than reality. The clear water stirs brown under my clumsy footsteps.

I’m knee-deep, four-pronged spear poised in my hand, when Cynthia matter-of-factly mentions that baby freshwater crocs and 1.5-metre (aquatic) file snakes call this paradise home. It’s OK though, she reassures me, as each snake “will feed five or six of us".

Nearby, down by the river, the men fish with spears and hand-lines, keeping a look out for salties which are apparently even higher up the food chain than the river’s bull sharks. Cynthia adroitly collects river mussels with her hands from between rocks in shallow rapids. She repeatedly surfaces with rolled-up T-shirts full; one dish for tonight’s feast sorted.

Cynthia tells me about a less hands-on way to fish: dropping ironwood bark into small ponds, which starves the fish of oxygen, “poisoning them". They then simply return later to collect the catch of the day, which is already floating on the surface.

Protein options abound, from the ubiquitous buffaloes (usually hunted with rifles) to the piquant lime-and-chili-esque taste of raw green ants. The vegetable aisle is stocked to overflowing.

A few metres from our camp Cynthia introduces me to the white apple (great as a preserve), the green plum and the frustratingly small yet succulent bush peanut. Plants that aren’t palatable often stock the bush medicine cabinet instead – everything from bellyache to mozzie bites can be sorted out. And if you’re thirsty, simply tap a bulbous knot on a riverbank paperbark tree, the Yolngu equivalent of the office water cooler.

I reach the limits of my bush-food sampling adventure after a quick bite on a morsel of fresh river turtle (or rubbery river chicken).

Luckily former fine-dining chef Dave cooks up an-over-the-fire gourmet storm (as he does for every meal on Venture North’s trip) that my city palate is more comfortable with. As we drive away heading towards the coast though, I feel like I should proceed to the nearest bush checkout.

Bush verandah to big city gallery

A cyclone would struggle to distract Kathy Wirrpanda. She answers my questions, but her eyes don’t meet mine for long, a mix of cultural etiquette and ‘my-god-I-need-to-finish-this’ focus.

Aboriginal art Baniyala east Arnhem Land

Kathy Wirrpanda paints a masterpiece, Baniyala, East Arnhem Land (photo: Elise Hassey).

Kathy sits cross-legged on the ground in her ‘studio’ – the verandah shade of her house in Baniyala – a handful of pre-rolled roll-your-owns within easy grasp. She applies white, mustard and rusty coloured local ochres to a termite-hollowed stringybark trunk with an ultra-fine brush, made from her daughter’s hair.

She glides millimetre-perfect, cross-hatch lines onto what is traditionally a ceremonial burial pole, over the top of totemic animal carvings.

“It might just look like patterns, but we can read it," she says. “I will finish tomorrow maybe, maybe later. When I do, maybe then I will rest." Kathy is a renowned painter, but despite all of her efforts over the past few days, she will not be credited as the main artist on this work.

Her husband, community elder Djambawa Marawili AM, who carved the pole’s animals, will get the crocodile’s share of the accolades.

A few days later, I serendipitously bump into Kathy at Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Centre at Yirrkala, many kilometres away. Family members struggle under the weight of the pole, while a visibly more relaxed Kathy directs, everyone’s eyes darting between her grin and the enchanting work of art.

This not-for-profit gallery has already agreed to buy the pole, as it does most of the community’s pieces, but there is no worry about Kathy’s masterpiece collecting dust on its shelves. It is destined for a place far, far away, in a big city on the east coast.

Country is where the heart is

A rollicking tune from local bush band Garrangali beckons Baniyala’s school kids back from lunch via a PA. Most of this community’s low-lying homes are within a cooee of the modern school, but there are few children in town today. Funeral business up country, apparently.

Brendan Marika, Garrangali’s keyboardist, walks us around his adopted Blue Mud Bay homeland, the place where the saltwater crocodile, referred to as ‘Baru’, first came ashore in creation stories.

This ‘dry’ settlement is a product of the Homelands movement, when indigenous people moved back onto ‘country’ in the 1970s, away from dysfunctional towns and missions, the alcohol and cross-cultural disputes.

In doing so they revived many of the old ways. “In towns there are a lot of temptations," says Brendan. “Out here there’s more freedom, and a much stronger culture – it’s better to bring up kids."

We shelter from the dry-season sun under a noble tamarind tree, planted by the great, great, great grandfather of elder Djambawa (Brendan’s father-in-law). It is evidence, he says, of the clan’s trading with the Macassans, Indonesian seafarers who long ago traded commodities like knives and tobacco for spears and labour on their trips to stock up on precious trepang (sea cucumbers).

Brendan proudly takes us to a giant stingray sculpted out of the sandy rock nearby; a surrounding fence hints at its importance. He is tasked with its protection, one of his roles as IPA (Indigenous Protected Area) Ranger, but he gladly unlocks the gate and walks us around the compound.

He tosses sand into the air, vibrates his lips, like blowing an ancient Yolngu raspberry, and chants the names of places where he wants abundant stingrays. How does Brendan feel about balanda like me walking over this sacred place? “This land is who we are as Yolngu, that’s for sure, but this is all about sharing knowledge, culture – and bridging the gap in the 21st century!"

With perfect weather and absolutely no risk of rain, camping at Bukadal east Arnhem Land is glorious.

Sleeping under the Morning Star at Bukudal

Young Tony Mununggurr expertly etches the shape of a turtle into the hard sand with a stingray barb he’s found by some huge marble-like rocks at the end of Bukadal’s main beach.

He draws 26 eggs underneath and counts them out loud with gusto. Tony loves to devour turtle eggs – everyone here does. Consuming these animals may be seen as controversial, but it’s an important cultural practice.

drawing turtles in sand Bukadal East Arnhem Land

Tony Mununggurr draws turtles in the sand, Bukadal, East Arnhem Land (photo: Elise Hassey).

Not even a teen yet, he has already absorbed lifetimes of culture about his homeland, Bukadal, a remote soul-cleansingly picturesque settlement on Caledon Bay. It’s not a place you happen upon by accident, but one you dream of. It’s a challenging drive through hungry sand from the main road; the Mununggurr family has to drag us out of one particularly treacherous part.

Tony points out a couple of ‘croc slides’ (the only reason I’m not swimming right now to cool off) on our impromptu beach walk.

We rejoin generations of traditional owners, the Mununggurrs, as beach campfire replaces daylight in the ‘Land of the Morning Star’. Elder

Kevin Mununggurr performs an uncomplicated ‘Welcome to Country’ and then I set up my swag in the dunes near the Knowledge Tree, central to the Djapu people’s narrative. There’s zero chance of rain tonight, it’s the ‘mini-dry’ season – Yolngu believe there are between six and eight seasons in Arnhem Land, not just the usual wet-dry dichotomy.

Hard-won right: Waka Mununggurr digging for turtle eggs, East Arnhem Land (photo: Elise Hassey).

The charismatic Sean Mununggurr leads the fireside conversation, telling stories with theatrical aplomb. Unsurprisingly, he sometimes goes ‘off country’ to do some acting.

Sean recounts stories of his ‘bad boy’ life, when the temptations of towns far away saw him stray, before he followed the way of his ancestors.

He played a troubled teen in the 2001 film Yolngu Boy – life imitating art. “Me and Kevin are living here on this land in our father’s footsteps," he says. “The knowledge has been passed on to us – so now it stays forever."

Indigenous spear fishing east Arnhem Land

Sean Mununggurr launches his spear at a barramundi, Bukadal, east Arnhem Land (photo: Elise Hassey).

Watching him spear fish along the beach you’d swear he has spent his whole life in Bukadal; the crouched intuitive stance when he’s about to launch the spear, the way he sprints after a school of barra, his wild whoops after he makes a catch.

The calm conversation slowly drifts into the bay breeze before it whistles through casuarina trees. The Morning Star and the full moon shine like stadium lights; it’s almost too bright to sleep.

Two indistinct birds ping back and forth just above the sound of waves rolling onto shore. I’ve seen evidence of wild buffaloes, snakes and crocodiles out there in the darkness, but I feel safe in our camp for the night, watched over by more generations of my hosts than just those I can see in the firelight.

East Arnhem Land details

How we did it:

Venture North’s ‘A Journey Through East Arnhem Land’ is a new seven-day luxury 4WD trip from Darwin to Nhulunbuy through a selection of communities including Bulman, Baniyala, Bukudal and Bawaka.

Be aware that the itinerary can change dramatically due to cultural reasons, a funeral for instance, at a moment’s notice.

The fully catered journey (up to six people) focuses on cultural experiences, including hunting, food and art. Forget about hotels out here (all the stars are in the outback sky); accommodation is in netted swags and basic dorms. Prices start at $5990 per person (based on a minimum of four passengers).

Drive yourself

East Arnhem Land is not an easy place to drive through for independent travellers, but well worth the effort. You will have to pre-arrange permits to transit and to visit each community.

If you plan to leave the main road, you will also need to have a well-equipped 4WD and be able to get yourself out of trouble (sand bogs and river crossings).

For more on permits, see Nhulunbuy-based Lirrwi Tourism, which also offers a mix of cultural experiences ranging from homeland adventures to art tours.

When to go

Dry season from May to October is the ideal time to go.

While it is possible to visit some places in the Wet (November to April), it’s a completely different experience – many roads are impassable due to flooding.

From Country to coast, Arnhem Land offers an invitation to connect with the spirit of an ancient landscape.

I’ve been told more than once, by people who know a lot more about it than me, that if you just listen, Country will speak to you. Floating on this large tinnie with the engine cut on a ‘side street’ of the Arafura Swamp near Murwangi, I can finally hear it – even if I don’t yet understand the language.

It’s too hot for cicadas, but the waterbirds of Arafura are providing the soundtrack to this experience. The mad cackle of blue-winged kookaburras. The high-pitched calls of plumed whistling ducks. The majestic cries of various kite species as they circle overhead.

And the resonant honks of magpie geese, totems of the local Ganalbingu People and allegedly very good walle (eating), although you’ll need to go through the correct ceremonies to find out. All the while, wind has become a telephone to the elements, rustling through the gum trees and Arafura palms.

There aren’t many crocodiles right now – recent flooding has made their territory a whole lot larger than the usual 700 square kilometres of freshwater ecosystem they have to wallow around in. But they’re still here to join in the cacophony of life.

Murwangi guide, Graham Gunurri. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

In fact, our first crocodile makes itself known just as our guides – Ganalbingu man, Graham Gunurri and adopted Indigenous man, Lachlin Dean – stop at a significant landmark that relates to a local songline. We only get the topline version – the rest is only shared during ceremony – but what is clear is that a crocodile spirit was trapped under the water below us for stealing fire during the Dreamtime. No sooner has this been shared than the thrash of a tail and the whip of a pointed, scaly nose indicates that a free-roaming crocodile just caught itself a juicy fish for lunch.

Arnhem Land with Outback Spirit

Enjoy a cruise of Arafura Swamp. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

This is only day four of Outback Spirit’s 13-day Arnhem Land Wetlands & Wildlife wilderness adventure from Cairns to Darwin. Starting with a flight from Cairns, in Tropical North Queensland, into the Northern Territory’s Gove Peninsula, spending the first few days exploring Nhulunbuy and Yirrkala.

Before we’d even touched down, it was immediately clear that Arnhem Land stands apart from the rest of Australia. Looking out my window, I was struck by how untamed the landscape is. In most parts of this country, you only get glimpses of this sort of ‘wild’ before farmland or buildings tear it apart. But not here.

Nhulunbuy is known for its beautiful beaches. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

“Just wait until you see the golden dirt,” my seatmate, Lisa, leaned over to tell me. “It’s so red.” Lisa is a local, returning from a quick trip to Sydney – a very long way for a doctor’s appointment. But she was relieved to be returning home. “I just want a peaceful life. It’s a peaceful life here,” she shared.

Outside my window, the dense, dark-green blanket spread out over the land continued untouched until we flew a little lower, when that red dirt Lisa prepared me for breaks through. In the last of the day’s light, the winding roads glow like the veins and arteries of the Earth.

“This has to be the most beautiful airport I’ve ever seen,” I exclaimed. Lisa just smiled, satisfied.

Welcome to Gove Peninsula

A member of the Galpu clan in East Arnhem Land. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

The next day, our group of 15 heads out to Wirrwawuy Beach where we receive a Welcome to Country by the Traditional Custodians of the land, the Galpu clan of the Miwatj (north-east Arnhem Land), part of Yolŋu Country. The joy we are privy to is infectious. Following the lead vocals of Lita Lita Gurruwiwi (born performer and, I suspect from his endless jokes, larrikin), we trace the songline of a spiritual man searching the land for food and water. It’s a family affair. Clan leaders play clapping sticks and yidaki (the Yolŋu word for didgeridoo). Three-year-old children pay close attention to the hands, feet and cries of the adults around them. They join in for the promise of a lolly and then abandon the show in favour of their own games.

A soft breeze rustles the leaves of the tamarind trees we sit under, bringing with it the gentle scent of ocean, just metres away from our shady patch. Excitement ripples through our group and the performers alike when a dolphin and her baby are spotted playing in small waves, connecting us further to the natural world around us. This is about sharing.

To close the Welcome to Country, jilka leaves are used to create a cleansing smoke. This same smoke is used to cleanse the belongings of the deceased, and then the loved ones of their grief. It’s also used to help connect new generations to Country. Today, it is used to make us safe on our travels through Arnhem Land.

Spotting wildlife at Arafura Swamp

an aerial view of Murwangi Lodge, Arnhem Land

Murwangi Lodge is exclusive to guests of Outback Spirit. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

It’s a safety I’ll be especially thankful for on day four, sleeping at Outback Spirit’s exclusive Murwangi Safari Camp on the banks of the Arafura Swamp. While earlier in the day I heard Country, the message it’s sharing becomes loud and clear in the night.

While curled up in my comfortable safari tent – reading a book by lamplight with the zips tightly closed against the mosquito population – the nightly soundtrack of cicadas and birdcalls is suddenly, and violently, split in two.

A large splash, a low, primordial growl, one desperate squawk and then silence. The most eerie silence I’ve ever heard. The birds, geckos and cicadas don’t start up again for a good five minutes. I’ll never know for sure, but I feel confident the world stopped to honour the lost. I’ve seen a lot of crocodiles before, even in the wild. But something about this aural encounter feels more visceral than anything I’ve ever laid eyes on.

I’ve spent plenty of time on different lands around the world, but I’ve never witnessed the breathtaking busyness of such a remote one before. And this is only our second stop.

a waterbird in Arafura Swamp, Arnhem Land

Arafura Swamp is home to hundreds of species of waterbirds. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

Dropping a line at Maningrida

a luxe safari suite in Barramundi Lodge, Arnhem Land

Barramundi Lodge is in the remote reaches of Arnhem Land and features 12 luxe safari suites. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

The next day, we head to Barramundi Lodge, another safari-tented stop just outside the small community of Maningrida. Typically, we’d be driving for hours along red-dirt roads, but flooding as a result of record-breaking rain has rendered many of them closed. None of us complain as our 12-passenger aerial caravan flies us overhead instead. Showing off more of this beautiful country and keeping us oriented.

Sunsets at Barramundi Lodge are otherworldly. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

Here, swamp banks are swapped for the privacy of stringybark and woollybutt gum trees that surround each tent. The main dining cabin boasts sweeping views of the plain below, transformed each evening under the vibrant oranges and reds of sunset.

The name is no mistake. Every year, Barramundi Lodge attracts guests hoping to catch themselves a juicy barra. A metre-long club plaque hangs proudly near the kitchen. And, while some members of our group do have luck with their fishing rods out on the nearby Liverpool and Tomkinson rivers, it’s again the wildlife that captures my attention.

a saltwater crocodile in Liverpool River

A large saltie near the mouth of Liverpool River. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

Mud skippers turning muddy mangrove banks of the mid-tide to silver as they scuttle around. Egrets stretching their long legs as they wade along the edges of the water. A white-bellied sea eagle circling overhead. And of course, crocodiles. Dozens lining the banks, soaking up the morning sun, proving completely unbothered by our existence, while tiny waving crabs dance all around them. Pandanus and towering paperbark trees indicate where the salty mangrove water stops and freshwater begins.

Keeping culture going

Admire the artwork of local Aboriginal people. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

With all fishermen satisfied, we head back to shore and over to Maningrida Arts & Culture centre – the oldest and largest of its kind in the Northern Territory, with all profits going back to the artists – and the Djómi Museum.

Doreen Jinggarrabarra is our guide to both, a leading fibre artist whose work has been shown in galleries around the world. Doreen shares with us the basics of her art form, weaving pandanus leaves into magic before our eyes. Although a full dilly bag would take two to three weeks to complete, the large installations she exhibits take even longer.

an Aboriginal artist weaving a dilly bag in Barramundi Lodge

Artist Doreen Jinggarrabarra weaving a dilly bag. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

Despite her huge success as an artist, it’s not until Doreen has finished walking us around Djómi that she allows a modest sense of pride to enter her tone. But it’s not for herself.

“We don’t forget our culture,” she tells us. “We teach our kids. We keep it going.”

And that’s what the museum is about. Keeping it going, even outside the community. Doreen walks us around artefacts and artworks, meticulously explaining the materials and use of each one. Or, at least, those of the Eastern clans to which she belongs. For the items collected from further away, Doreen sits down. They’re not her stories to tell.

The intricate details of a dilly bag. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

We learned back at Buku-Larrŋggay Mulka Centre in Gove Peninsula that this is essential to local culture. Songlines are held within every artwork and every artefact. The Yolŋu don’t deal in numbers, we were told. But it’s safe to say that tens of thousands of years of knowledge and history are written into these artworks. Sharing a songline that doesn’t belong to you is a huge offence, the traditional punishment being death.

Exploring the rock art of Mt Borradaile

lily pads by the creek near Mt Borradaile

A lily-clad billabong near Mt Borradaile. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

It’s an education we take with us into our next stop, Mt Borradaile, famed for being home to the largest outdoor rock art gallery in the world, some of which dates back as far as 55,000 years. It’s impossible to count the number of artworks across the 700-square-kilometre area where the remote safari lodge is nestled against the Arnhem Land escarpment.

Escarpment country is different again. Gum trees still abound and water isn’t far away, but we find ourselves in the middle of dusty, rocky land. Deep red and brown tones take over here.

Mt Borradaile has the world’s largest single collection of rock art. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

A buffalo hunter turned environmentalist who opened eco lodge Davidson’s Arnhemland Safaris here, Max Davidson was granted permission to use the land by the Amurdak People who own it, and his friend Charlie Mangulda in particular – the last man who can say he belongs to this Country. After stumbling on one of the largest known depictions of the Rainbow Serpent in Australia, they decided to share the art instead.

While modern artworks are more detailed, showing everything from mythical figures and local animals to guns and boats, it’s the oldest, simplest displays that really get under my skin. Grass strikings and handprints are believed to serve as the original mark on Country. I can’t help but wonder who that person was, with a handprint so like mine, leaving signs of life tens of thousands of years ago.

Hundreds of birds fly above the ancient landscape. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

The afternoon is spent out on Coopers Creek. Once again, I’m struck by the beauty of Arnhem Land’s waterways. The way they teem with life, making them at once the busiest places I’ve ever seen, yet somehow also the calmest. Wild rice lines the banks, where hundreds of magpie geese fill the air with their honks. And then with their bodies as they occasionally take flight, creating a spotty blanket against the clear sky.

Nearby, a whistling kite swoops a dead fish floating in the water. He eventually gives up and flies away, possibly in embarrassment. Crocodiles tease us from along the lily pads lining the edge of the creek, dipping below the surface when our boat gets too close.

Meanwhile, the sculptured cliff faces of Mt Borradaile itself change colours as the sun moves lower in the sky. And our little tour group, in the middle of it all, is the only sign of human interference.

Ending in luxury at Seven Spirit Bay

the wilderness lodge at Seven Spirit Bay, Coral Bay.

The wilderness lodge overlooks Coral Bay. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

It’s almost a shock when we find ourselves at Seven Spirit Bay on the Cobourg Peninsula the next afternoon. While the earthy tones are not entirely gone, they are mixed with a white ochre and the vivid green of native plants recently treated to rainfall.

Our lodge sits above the pristine sands and calm waters of the bay, cruelly enticing guests to dive right in even while crocodiles and sharks make that impossible. Like one of our guides will later say: “I don’t like going in the crocodile’s bathtub.”

Crossing the Arafura Sea at the top of Australia, we explore Victoria Settlement, the third, ill-fated attempt at British settlement in these parts and the motivation for many in my group to join this tour in the first place. Remnants of buildings and graves remain crumbling as plants slowly reclaim their territory.

the structure remains of Victoria Settlement

The crumbling remains of Victoria Settlement. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

We head back onto the water the next day to fish. The unsheltered water is rough enough to have us bouncing like we’re on a roller coaster. Wide, open ocean is replaced by striking, corrugated cliffs, eroded over the years by rainfall and leaving trees desperately clinging to red and white ochre with their exposed roots. We find a place to drop a line in.

Upon return to the lodge, we notice lemon sharks circling the pier, hoping to feast on the remains of our freshly caught fish as it’s prepared for tonight’s dinner. This last stop of our Arnhem Land journey feels like another world entirely. One where the gentle lapping of the ocean lulls us to sleep each night, and elevated accommodation offers more space than we’ve had in two weeks.

an aerial view of Seven Spirit Bay in Garig GunakBarlu National Park

Seven Spirit Bay is set amid the marine sanctuary of Garig Gunak Barlu National Park. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

Our 13-day journey will end tomorrow with a sunset cruise along Darwin’s famous Mindil Beach, but the emotion of leaving Arnhem Land hits me tonight. This isn’t a journey all Australians will take in their lifetime. But it is one that will never be forgotten by those who do.

A traveller’s checklist

Getting there

Fly direct to Cairns Airport from all major cities with Virgin, Jetstar and Qantas. Outback Spirit and Airnorth will take it from there.

Playing there

Outback Spirit is the only tour operator to take guests across the entire top of Arnhem Land (from east to west). Join the Arnhem Land Wetlands & Wildlife tour between May and September, from $11,795pp twin share. All accommodation, transportation, permits, food and drinks included.

termite mounds in Murwangi Safari Camp, Arnhem Land

Termite mounds reach for the sky. (Image: Jess Miocevich)

East Arnhem Land: the ultimate cultural odyssey