One of Australia’s most remote and culturally rich regions offers a life-changing experience for those who make the journey.
WORDS Sue Williams
We’re standing on a vast sunlit plain of spinifex and sorghum grasses, dotted with spindly stringybark trees as far as the eye can see, stretching out towards endless swamp lands beyond the horizon. There’s the musty smell of earth, a faint rustling from a soft breeze and absolutely no other sign of life, neither animal nor human. I breathe deeply. This is the world as it once existed – natural, naked and completely unspoilt. Yet, equally, it’s impossible to imagine how anyone could survive in a place like this.
And then local man Frankie Guninyirrnyirr (corr) strolls up. He looks as completely at home as the rest of us might in any of Australia’s frenetic, high-rise, traffic-choked capital cities.
“G’day!” he says, grinning. “Welcome! Welcome to my world.” Frankie’s people, the Yolngu, have lived in Arnhem Land, the most remote part of Australia at the top of the Top End, for more than 60,000 years, and will never leave. This is their past, present and future – 97,000 square kilometres of Aboriginal freehold land stretching from the Gulf of Carpentaria in the east to Kakadu National Park in the west. They’re spiritually, culturally and materially welded to this place and revel in its isolation.
That’s why it feels like an incredible privilege to be welcomed and shown the traditional lifestyle that has sustained them from ancient times. Frankie crouches down and falls silent as he dips a twig into some ochre he’s broken onto a nearby slab of rock. He’s concentrating fiercely but, in a matter of minutes, he stands up and shows us his handiwork. To introduce himself properly, he’s painted an astonishingly vivid image of a water monitor on the inside of his arm. This is his sacred totem, his spirit animal that represents his connection to his ancestors, his clan identity, his culture and the natural world.
We’re overcome by both the generosity of the gesture and the beauty of his artwork. It feels like such an intimate glimpse into a rich Indigenous world that the 22 of us on this 13-day trip had little idea of before.
On our second day, we’re driven to the remote white-sand Wirrwawuy Beach, five kilometres from Nhulunbuy, lapped by the turquoise waters of the Arafura Sea. Here, a group of Yolngu people dressed in brilliant colours in homage to their rainbow serpent totem, greet us with a traditional Welcome to Country ceremony.
They are the Yolngu of the Gumatj clan – a group which included the late great Yothu Yindi singer-songwriter and former Australian of the Year Mandawuy Yunupingu. His sister Dhopiya, an honoured elder, is among them. “Good to see you here,” she says, smiling, through an interpreter.
Then, to the mesmerising sound of three musicians on clapsticks and a didgeridoo, the men and women entertain us with dance and song, telling stories about looking for waterholes, digging for yams and hunting. One, their English-speaking companion told us, was about asking a black crow if they could share his waterhole. In the middle of it, a real black crow screeches and flutters out from the casuarina tree above their heads. It feels like more than a coincidence – the spirituality of it is tangible.
Finally, we are approached by the women only, carrying a big black tureen filled with leaves from a local bush that had been crushed and boiled over a campfire. They’re the traditional healers and ask if any of us have aches and pains we’d like healed. They then scoop up great armfuls of sloppy Butjiringaning leaves and massage the aloe vera-type gooey extract into our shoulders, arms, knees – anything that hurts. It’s a remarkable introduction to a strong Indigenous culture that’s still practised regularly, still treasured and protected, with its keepers happy and eager to share it with visitors.
Our guide-driver Greg Patterson has worked in this area for many years, seems to know everyone and is trusted by the Indigenous locals as someone rightfully respectful of their ways. “Outback Spirit has been running this trip through Arnhem Land since 2012 and we have permission to go to many places that others wouldn’t be allowed to go,” he tells us. “There are a lot of rules about where outsiders can travel to, and where they can’t stop, but we’re very lucky to have built up relationships with communities, and so we’re the only tour group of this type that travels regularly through this region. We’ll be having many experiences, and seeing many things that few visitors have ever had access to.”
Over the following days, we come to understand how precious these connections are. Frankie, for instance, is a fabulous treasure. While we’re with him, he carves bark off the stringybark trees and burns them, seals them and shows how his ancestors used to fashion them into sturdy canoes to use on the Arafura Swamp (Gurruwiling), one of the largest contiguous paperbark swamps in the country. This is a cultural practice that has long fascinated the outside world, too, after it was the subject of 2006 film Ten Canoes – the first Australian film ever to be made entirely in Indigenous languages.
We spend our nights – two nights generally in each place – staying in luxurious glamping camps, eating beautiful food on terraces with panoramic views overlooking the land or the waters we’re exploring. Our travelling days are on the comfortable yet rugged 26-seater Mercedes-Benz vehicle, making our way for the 1,217 kilometre journey over the red dust roads or fording streams, with stops in the wilderness for lunch and morning or afternoon tea. Other trips are on boats on the swamp, snapping with crocodiles and fluttering with an immense array of birds, on meandering rivers and on the sea, teeming with fish beneath our bows, or in smaller vehicles to visit sites of ancient rock art or to experience special safaris.
And everywhere we are welcomed with open arms and hearts. In the town of Maningrida (Manayingkarírra), we visit its art and culture centre, one of a number of galleries along the way. Here, local artist Doreen Jinggarrabarra demonstrates how she uses pandanus and jungle vines for her work. “I learnt from watching my mother,” she tells us. “This is the traditional way. We love to do this. We want to keep our culture alive. Welcome, welcome. Thank you for coming.”
The 13-day Arnhem Land Wilderness Adventure with Outback Spirit offers experiences like a traditional Welcome to Country ceremony, meeting local Indigenous people to learn about their culture, and visiting remote local art centres and ancient rock art sites.