​ABOVE: Tony fishes on the beach early in the morning as a buoy washes up to the north. The other one landed on the beach to his left.


Conjecture comes easy when you camp out in the sticks, especially if you are alone.  People probably going about innocent business can take on a sinister tinge, as they did for us on Cape Leveque.

Foreign backpackers talk warily about scenes from Wolf Creek, the horror movie set in the outback.  I have never watched it but I think every European mother must hire it out for sons and daughters planning a roam around the vast empty spaces of the Lucky Country.  They all seem to know about Wolf Creek the movie and usually go to the big crater at the top of the Tanami just so they can say they have been there.

Johann the young Dutch traveller with an attractive French scuba instructor in tow stopped for a chat at a rest area south of Broome. As we waved away flies he told us of feeling twinges of alarm early one morning at seeing a group of children being shepherded from one vehicle into another in a remote spot. One was crying and didn’t want to go. Child smugglers? Later that day the children returned and switched cars again at what they deduced, with some relief, to be a rural school car pool spot.

We told him of our curious experience when camped alone north of Broome at Quandong. As Isabel perched on the red cliff we had a pretty beach to ourselves and our own Indian Ocean sunsets. Cable Beach eat your heart out.

Cape Leveque is starkly stunning: red roads and cliffs, green scrub, white sand and turquoise water. The ocean coughed up a mangrove jack and, one morning, a large floating net buoy. As it floated north past some rocks to probably come ashore on the high tide we spotted another one on the beach to the south.

That night a worn white ute turned up at dusk and made its way down the little track to our beach. The driver hopped out and flashed a torch around the beach, up and down and around the cliff base. As we peered over, the flashlight picked up Tony.

“Doing a bit of fishing mate?” he asked. Replied The Searcher: “Nah, just looking around.”

We retired to our sundowners and watched curiously. The ute ploughed back out, bogged itself for a few minutes, headed south down the track and returned. It headed north, where we could see the flashlight on a nearby beach. It returned to our beach, driving as far south as possible with the flashlight searching. That was where the buoy had landed on the sand.

Over another sundowner we speculated that the buoys contained drugs and transmitters and had been carefully cast into the high tides to come ashore here. The Searcher would have found the one that came ashore on the sand and was probably still looking for the one that floated further north. Maybe they had tracking devices but it was odd The Searcher was looking at the base of the cliffs, not just the high water mark.

We wondered if the buoys were from a pearl farm and needed recovering. After all, The Searcher had gumboots. Maybe someone had stuffed stolen pearls into them and the buoys held millions of dollars worth of gems.

The Searcher continued busily driving and flashing, intently “just looking around” until the wee hours. Next morning we had to revise our conjecture. The buoy was still there.

Maybe then The Searcher had been seeking a lost partner who had set out to walk along the side roads and beaches of the western Cape Leveque stretch. Then why had he not asked us if we had seen her?

Maybe they had had a row and she had shot through, probably sulking and hiding at the base of the cliffs. He might have been too embarrassed to say he was looking for his woman.  Maybe he had beaten her up. Maybe she was a foreigner held in semi-slavery conditions. Maybe …. Oh hell, the poor bugger might have just been looking for some illegal immigrants he was supposed to pick up. 

ABOVE: Tony hunts for the elusive common crow butterflies at Butterfly-less Gorge,

Butterflies had decamped from Butterfly Gorge but the Germans are doing a great job of travelling and working in remote Australia. So we learned at Douglas hot springs 200km south of Darwin.

Matthias the Munich wine maker relaxing in the hot springs said German backpackers still make up the biggest segment of that tourism sector in Australia.

We had been wondering if young Germans had been overtaken by French backpackers because they are bonjouring over the outback in astonishing numbers.  The Irish are here in force, of course, with lesser numbers of British, Dutch and Swiss pouring beer, petrol and generally running the country beyond the metro limits. Not a lot of young Aussies are out here.

Among the older foreign folk traipsing the outback and coastal towns, we have been surprised at the number of Swiss couples exploring steadfastly through the heat and dust, revelling in space, spectacular scenery and sparse population.

Matthias, 30, assured us Germans are still No. 1 in the Aussie backpacker market.  He worked as a wine maker in Vietnam for a few months on his world odyssey. In Australia over the last six months he has worked as a porter at Fraser Island’s Kingfisher Bay and at the Moffatdale Ridge and Clovelly vineyards in the South Burnett.

He lit out from Germany to explore the world armed with degrees in economics and wine making. He met Jessica, a 19-year-old traveller also from Munich, in a Cairns car park and they pooled resources to head for Perth in his 4WD Patrol.

Over a cold beer and an excellent Mofftdale Verdelho, we discussed wine, environmental issues and why the tearing down of the Berlin Wall was a grand news event but not a terrific economic move for West Germany.

Matthias with his economic degree and the wisdom of hindsight unfettered by emotion, explained a steadier integration of the two Germanies would have avoided downturn in the wealthy West when millions of East Germans landed on the Bonn welfare lists. It would also have allowed East German companies time to adapt to capitalism instead of faltering and being taken over by West corporations.

Heavy stuff at the relaxing hot springs that proved as excellent as the Verdelho. Three streams converge at the junction of the Douglas River, one hot, one cold and one warm. You can pick a pool with the temperature to suit along the pandanus-lined sands.

National Parks runs the camp at the springs, about 30km to the west of the Stuart Highway, 130km north of Katherine. Douglas Springs was better than expected and we set off along the 4WD track to Butterfly Gorge, about16km further up the track. That proved below expectations as butterfly numbers were on a par with North Korean backpackers.

We surmised they might have been driven out by the heat and long dry season but made a note to find out when they return. We have already ticked off Douglas Springs for a return visit so no doubt we will make that trek to the gorge again when we wander that way again and the butterflies are returned.

I sent a query on the National Parks on line feedback form but at this stage I have had no response to the question about what happened to the butterflies and if their departure is seasonal.

A forlorn lost little dog haunted our night a couple of years ago on the southern end of the Tanami Track.

We were camped in the red dust and spinifex with travelling companions Ken and Noreen Price. The stars were brilliant, Alice was a couple of hundred kilometres away and the little dog kept calling: “Woof woof! Woof woof!”

We surmised the poor little bugger had been lost when someone pulled up on the track. Next night in an Alice Springs caravan park we were bemused to hear half a dozen of the same little dogs calling in the night.

Australia’s barking owl, always known to us as the woof woof bird, does its remarkable imitation of a dog over most of the land. Since we made its acquaintance we have been pleased to hear the familiar sound at dozens of campsites but our Kakadu experience was the best yet.

To tell the truth, we expected the charms of Kakadu’s venerated birdlife to be over-rated. With the exception of the woof woof owl, it met our expectations.

My brother Russell tells of a friend who paid the exorbitant fees to get into Kakadu and take a guided tour. The ranger hushed them as they crept along to see some rare specimen and then pointed triumphantly to a white bird. Old mate Kev reportedly burst out laughing, then shook his head: “It’s a bloody egret, for God’s sake. We’ve got thousands of them back home.”

We tried to keep an open mind because it was a dry time of the year and as the locals said “There’s been no f*@k#ng wet mate!” Birdlife was fairly ordinary until our last night when we went bush to the Four Mile Waterhole and camped on our own beside a pretty lagoon.

As darkness fell we heard the familiar “Woof! Woof!” in a tree close by. Tony investigated and called for me to bring the camera. In a low branch sat the owl, posing for pictures and calling to a couple of mates across the lagoon in a barking chorus.

Our woof woof played to the camera like Miranda Kerr (above), seemingly unfazed by the flash – unless, as Tony said, it was so blinded by the light that it couldn’t fly until we had stopp ed shooting for a while.

We returned to our sundowners and marked our first barking sighting in the trusty bird book. The accompanying information stated that the barking owl is one of the few that relies almost entirely on sight to catch its prey.

We didn’t worry about lost dogs any more but we did wonder guiltily if our friendly woof woof went squinting and hungry that night. 

 

A splurge is good for the soul now and again. The helifishing almost wasn’t.

In South America we tossed the budget aside for a five-day tour into the Brazilian Pantanal jungle where we given a 95% chance of spotting jaguar in the wild. We saw four and never regretted the splashout.

South Africa was made forever memorable by a diversion to three days of luxury in a game park where we wined and dined with a passing parade of wildlife, culminating in a being mobbed by elephants.

In Darwin, helifishing was on the agenda. Daughter Amber was treating fiancé Dean for his birthday and the women in Tony’s life – four daughters et moi – chipped in to send him along too for Fathers’ Day and his birthday.

We were a bit concerned about the trip because, as we had been told a hundred times in the north, “the barra aren’t biting mate because there was no f@ck!ng wet”.

With high hopes we set off with Sam the chopper pilot on what turned out to be a terrific fun day. Admittedly the wetlands bordering Kakadu were on the dry side but we had fun buzzing pigs and buffalo.  Crocodiles were waiting in the waterways, a snowplough rested in the heat and we saw the devastation being caused by rampant mimosa that multiplied exuberantly through the wetlands after someone dumped seed-containing soil from the Darwin botanic gardens.

Once again we shake our heads over the stupidity of land management in city-green offices: grab the land for national parks but have no effective, funded programs to rid tracts of Australia of destructive feral fauna and flora.

Our first lagoons stop was a frightening experience with a 5m croc. Tony, upstream, noticed lilies moving as something edged towards the rest of us downstream. When the croc poked its head up he said “Boo” behind it. The startled croc splashed off; Amber surprised it a little further along and the terrified lizard almost walked on water to get away.

No fish were biting. We jumped in the chopper and landed on a little spit out into part of the Mary River. Barra were swirling and jumping but not biting. Off we went to another one of Mary’s arms, about 20m wide on a flat plain.

Here I had my Jaws experience. About 8m from where I was fishing and daydreaming a monstrous head appeared silently out of the water. I think it had a fish in its mouth as it eyed me – and then the rest of the body and tail rose with a splashing swirl before disappearing.

I gaped in astonishment, vividly reminded of the scene in the movie when Brody is feeding burley aft and the monster silently surfaces with toothy mouth opening like Luna Park. Like Brody, I slowly took two steps back. He said those memorable, understated words “You’ve gotta get a bigger boat.” I said something a bit more direct.

Sam and Dean had seen the tail as the croc swirled. We agreed it was 5m plus.

Tony caught a decent barramundi (PICTURE ABOVE) that flicked itself off the hook on to a ledge at the bottom of the bank. Croc or no croc, it wasn’t getting away. He shot down, grabbed it and leapt out again faster than he has moved since I nearly set fire to Isabel.

At our next stop at a creek mouth Tony landed another barra and a golden snapper; Amber hauled in a barra and we headed home reasonably happy, except for a slightly disappointed Dean who uttered that other movie line “I will be back”.

We might too. It’s a brilliant experience and more so when the barra are biting in the run-off. That’s when it’s too wet to even use the incongruous snowplough to fix fences. The rest of the year it does the trick.

ABOVE: Made it. A 7km walk to the top of the lookout at Jarnem in the Keep River national park.

Isabel has been handling the heat of approaching summer remarkably well as we dawdled around Darwin. The Global Warrior does not have air conditioning but its design allows air to circulate freely through the raised roof, giving us reasonable sleeping conditions after days that have soared into the 40s.

We have always liked the city and with Isabel we relished the chance to explore the surrounding areas as well as soak up the ambiance of the tropical city. We tarried a lot longer than we intended and decided to take a rain check on a return to the Gibb River in the Kimberley.

Darwin has a seductive allure about it for Australians. It’s a laid-back city with a frontier feel accentuated by its courageous history.

Bombed by the Japanese during World War 11 and flattened by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas morning 1974, it rebuilt and returned to its role as our northern outpost. With both destructions the rest of Australia had only sketchy details of what had happened to Darwin: the bombings were heavily censored during the war and the communications wipeout on the awful Christmas Day meant news started filtering through slowly from Boxing Day.

Maybe that is part of the reason Darwin has a place in the hearts of Australians.

Finally we made the break and began to head west, wondering if we would meet up with Pat and Gary Pearson from the Fraser Coast. They were exploring the Kimberley with daughter Julie, son and daughter-in-law Gavin and Sandra and two grandchildren.

We had thought we would meet them along the Victoria Highway between Katherine and Kununurra as they headed home but it was a long shot. And we were later than expected.

We halted for the morning at Timber Creek for coffee and communications service. I thought I spied Julie Pearson as I drank coffee at the IGA store but then I thought “Nah”. I hadn’t seen her for years and have a sorry record of accosting strangers who looked vaguely like people I knew. Anyway the lookalike was heading west, not east.

We eschewed beer supplies at $74 a carton of cans at the hotel (Kununurra had specials of $78 for two cartons but that meant a few beer-less days at Keep River National Park on the way). After an hour or two on-line we decided to have lunch before heading off.

Into the IGA walked Pat and Julie. As temperatures soared towards 40 again Pat and I compared our feral levels; Gary and Tony compared fuel and beer prices; we all talked about the heat.

The Pearson gang had had a fabulous time but had barely slept for the last three nights in the heat wave. We waved goodbye as they headed east and we headed west to Jarnem camp in the Keep River. The heat meant it was sparsely populated: a Swiss couple who left early the next morning were our only companions.

That afternoon another Swiss couple, Ernest and Anita, appeared in a little motorhome that had proved way too hot. They had bought a little pop-up screened sleeping tent and were enjoying looking at the stars.

Ernest, a psychiatrist, was on his fifth trip to Australia. Anita, a nurse, was on her fourth. They were surprised by the heat and thinking about scooting down the Tanami track to Alice to at least get cooler nights in the desert.

We shared a wine in the moonlight and learned the Swiss don’t have quite the same reverence for the banks as they once did.  Swiss mortals had about a third of their super swept away in the GFC – yet the gods in the banking fraternity were insulated.

Despite that we seem to be meeting an awful lot of Swiss people in the north of Australia.

Ernest said he had been getting a bit scratchy because of lack of sleep and heat. I pointed out that he was the psychiatrist but maybe the troppo stuff isn’t regular fare in Switzerland disorders.

Jarnem was a haven, with an ancient Aboriginal art gallery, red rock escarpments, a lookout and flood plains. It is like a mini Kakadu at a fraction of the price ($3.30 a night v $35 per person to camp) and minus mosquitoes and people.

 

ABOVE: "Look Mum. No hands." A crocodile hovers in in the East Alligator River just above the causeway as the high tide rushes over, bring fish and maybe something extra.


“Excuse me, where is the generators?”  came the Scandinavian accent in the Kakadu campground.

We pointed to a designated area: “You can use your generator there.”

“No, I mean for us to plug in,” came the slightly agitated response.

When we explained there was no electricity at the Ubirr camp, one of about 20 camping spots in the park, he became more agitated. “But we paid.”

He and his companion had paid to come into the most expensive national park in Australia, one that has earned the name “Kaka-don’t” from locals. Northern Territory residents don’t have to pay to go to Kakadu but everyone else get’s slugged $25 to go through the gate. The power-less campground cost another $10 a person.

Admittedly the $25 is for two weeks in a big park of wetlands, crocodiles, Aboriginal art and stunning escarpments but let’s face it – how many travellers these days have the time or inclination to spend two weeks looking at variations of the same theme? Apparently the detached officials in comfortable public-funded offices who set the prices are just a little out of touch with reality.

Kakadu offers no concessions and no reduced prices for a two-day or three-day visit. Goods in the tiny shopping centre are two to three times dearer than in Darwin, only 250km on a fine sealed road from Darwin.

Visitor numbers are plummeting, blamed on the drop in European visitors because of the GFC. Some workers also quietly acknowledge that they think the problem is the growing realisation that prices are way too high. Rita and Ed, our American companions travelling with us along the Stuart Highway to Darwin, elected not to take a planned detour to Kakadu because they thought the entry fee was excessive for a quick visit to the wetlands. They were not alone.

We decided later to poke our noses into Kakadu for a couple of days, even though the park was not at its best because of the long dry (“No f@ck!$g wet this year, mate”). It was OK.

From Ubirr camp we trotted along to hear Ranger Kirsten Sierke from South Australia, who has worked at Kakadu for six months of the year for the last four years, give three talks at ancient art galleries, interpreting the significance of the drawings and explaining creation stories and the wildly complicated system of kinship, child naming patterns and poison relatives that controlled genetics.

A rainbow serpent painting in the main art gallery wall was of great significance, she said, because it was not believed to have been painted by man. It was an imprint of where the rainbow serpent rested as it set about carving the land.

A drawing of the rainbow serpent descending to eat a crying baby and all the adults nearby was a stern warning that calamity would befall any clans who let children cry without comforting them.

We climbed the great rock to look over the flood plain at sunset and recognised the scene as one used for a fleeting glimpse in Crocodile Dundee. The next morning we went to the East Alligator River to admire the massed crocodiles either side of the causeway at high tide at Cahill’s Crossing into Arnhem Land. We also admired the nerve of some of the residents from across the river who drove across the surging tide despite the waiting jaws.

At the Border Store we found excellent coffee and a sweet Thai lady Amm, who has a contract to run the store and restaurant for six months during the tourist season. The other six months Amm and husband Michael spend in Thailand.  They are closing the store after only four months this year because of the dramatic drop in visitors.

“This year we have gone backwards,” said Amm sadly. “It is hard. Everything is so expensive. We have to pay $9.99 for broccoli but it can be bought for $1.99 in Darwin. Everyone is complaining to us about the cost but we can’t do anything.”

One gets the impression that the Australian Government bit off a bit more than it could chew when it created the national park of almost 20,000 square kilometres. Someone should wise up the federal tourism minister. Hang on, there isn’t one.

Prime Minister Tony Abott ditched the tourism ministry and split it between Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb, who looks after international tourism, and Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane, who had domestic tourism under his wing. As Kakadu touches on both, maybe they should have a nice long lunch to chat about Kakadu finances.

 

Shari Boord is not quite your typical North Territory girl. She was raised in the saddle on a big cattle station and educated through the School of the Air but mingled with about 2000 African animals in the Australian bush.

Named after the star of the 1970s children’s TV show, the Shari Lewis Puppet Show, the tall, attractive, amiable mother of two didn’t have a pet called Lambchop. Instead she patted zebras, fed giraffes and learned to give hippos a wide, respectful berth.

The half a million acre Tipperary Station where she spent 24 years was winched into legendary status when it was bought by wealthy property developer Warren Anderson. He set up a menagerie of exotic animals, including critically endangered species such as the scimitar horned oryx and addax.

Shari was chilling out in The Lodge bar at Dundee Beach when we chummed up with a dismal attempt to sing along with Slim. After the blinding lights shot Slim over the edge a final time, I was awed to learn Shari, now 42, had seen the unfolding of the strange chapter in the Tipperary story. It is the stuff of movies.

So is Shari, who was the first woman skipper to take tourists to be thrilled by jumping crocodiles in the Adelaide River. After earning her coxswain ticket in her 20s she spent four years as skipper of the Adelaide Queen.

She now lives near Humpty Doo with her partner Brett and children Brett, 8, and Bailey, 6.  They were holidaying at Dundee for a few days with their pets – Spike the bearded dragon and Bubbles the blue-tongued lizard.

Shari’s father had been cattle manager on Tipperary, about 200km south of Darwin, in the 1980s when entrepreneur Anderson bought it to set up an African wildlife park.

“It was amazing. Semi-trailers would come in with loads of deer,” said Shari. “Big crates would arrive and we would peer inside them. ‘What’s that one?’ It might have been a rhinoceros or a pygmy hippopotamus.”

Shari speaks fondly of Warren, who also built a resort, a bitumen runway big enough for Boeing 727s and an indoor equestrian centre. The story became more bizarre in 2003 when the NT government arrested Warren at gunpoint and accused him of not properly feeding two of his rhinoceros. Oops. That led to a public apology and an undisclosed bundle of compensation.

Warren had hoped to stock Tipperary with 200,000 head of cattle but bailed out with financial problems in 2003. Extraordinary legal battles over the African animals followed. A Mareeba wildlife park was to take them but bureaucrats wanted them sterilised – and that caused some consternation seeing some were critically endangered.

Then early in March 2004 the Mareeba sanctuary was raided by – wait for it – the Federal Police, the RSPCA and the Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy. The owner, David Gill, fled to England, leaving the African animals at Tipperary in limbo.

About 300 bought by Mr Gill – including the scimitar horned oryx which is extinct in the wild in Africa but seems to thrive in Australia – were saved by Kevin Gleeson of the Mary River African Safaris. Yup, they shoot trophy animals out there but a couple of years ago at least they had not shot one of the rare oryx.

The herd has doubled in size and if they haven’t already at some stage someone will pay a lot of money to shoot an oryx head with scimitar horns. Before anyone shrieks in horror, let’s consider the whole picture: the hunter’s money will be fed back into management of the oryx herd, with surplus animals sold and the species eventually re-introduced in the African bush.

No-one is quite sure what happened to the rest of the Tipperary menagerie but another episode made international news when 27-year-old Nico Courtney went pig shooting with his mate Rusty in November 2009.

Spotlighting in the Douglas Daly region they bowled over a bloody big pig. In a Northern Teritory News interview, Nico’s version of what they said after they shot the animal  is, I reckon, heavily sanitised: “We got out to look at it and thought that’s not a pig. It’s a hippo. Then we thought ‘You don’t get hippos in Australia.’”

Hmm. C’mon Nico. I can picture some pretty colourful exchanges between you and Rusty that night.

PICTURE ABOVE: Shari with Bubbles the blue tonged lizard.

His name was Bird and he was combing the beach for plastic rubbish early in the morning. So early I was still in bed and peered out of Isabel at the tall skinny bloke talking to Tony at Dundee Beach.

What he said inspired me to do some beachcombing of my own with unexpected results.

We were perched on the beach for a few days because everyone reckoned we should go to Dundee Beach. Dundee has a sort of hallowed status around Darwin so we gave Isabel a run over the loose sand and parked upright on the beach by a little creek that looked fine for fishing.

Bird appeared to be wearing black socks but he was just tattooed to his knees. He told Tony he took a walk along the beach on the making tides because that was when the rubbish came in – the plastic tides he called them. Sometimes he picked up a lure as well.

He was pretty protective of his beach. A while back some young blokes lobbed on to the beach, set up a bonfire and proceeded to have a good time. That included smashing the empties into the fire.

Bird sauntered up and said politely he hoped they would be taking their rubbish with him. They politely told him to fuck off. Next morning he gathered all the rubbish and broken glass, tracked their quad bike treads back to where he was pretty sure they lived and left the trash in their driveway.

Dundee Beach has 27,236 quad bikes, or somewhere near that. Everyone gets around on some form of quads or beach buggy, either luxury boy toys or modified jalopies.

And everyone at some stage ends up at The Lodge, a kid-friendly open bar, restaurant, store and caravan park with air-conditioned, windowless donga unit for hire. Half a dozen sturdy old tractors take boats and trailers out into the water because most of the time the end of the ramp and the start of the water has a fair bit of sand in between. Boggy stuff.

Dundee Beach is all about fishing but the pickings were a bit slim when we were there. It was the worst time of the year and, of course, as they locals kept telling us there had been no f&ck!?g wet mate. I did achieve the admirable status of getting "f&ck!?g smashed mate" when my reel broke but it was probably a shark on the end of the line and Tony suggested politely it was also something to do with my awkward style of reeling.

Bird was a bit worried about Isabel being too heavy for the sand. Tony  assured him she was designed for it.  He was worried the making tides might make it to Isabel. Tony assured him we had checked the heights and should be right. He said a 3m crocodile lived in the creek. Tony said he would watch out for it.

Bird didn’t turn up the next morning so I decided to check the plastic tide in my morning walk. “Keep your eye out for a lure,” instructed Tony, handing me a seaweed-poking stick.

I picked one up a few hundred metres down the beach, along with a tube of sunscreen. In a little cove near rocks I spotted a bright pink stubby cooler. With delight it proved to be in mint condition. So was the full can of Tooheys New inside it.

Bird never mentioned a haul like that. The can went into the fridge and tasted perfect as we watched the sun sink below the Timor Sea. Somewhere someone is probably still wondering what happened to the Darwin Rocksitting World Championships cooler and can that bounced off his/her quad bike.

ABOVE:At the pulse of Aurukun: Community police liaison officers Jennifer Woolla (left) and Evelyn Marpoonndin.

Jennifer Woolla is sitting with her tiny fellow officer under the spreading shade tree in the square that is the pulse of Aurukun.

In her police uniform, hair sleeked back, she rises from her seat with an easy grace to greet us in the morning sunshine.

Constable James Hunter, formerly of Hervey Bay, is surprised to see her. “Didn’t you work late last night?”

The community police liaison officer smiles, nods and speaks quietly. Yes, she had. She’s tired but still wanted to come on duty that morning as rostered. Last night when her shift should have finished, her cousin would have been on liaison night duty alone. She didn’t want to leave him in case he needed help.

We were in Aurukun in deliver some books for the Indigenous Knowledge Centre after James had sent word that any children’s book, including Little Golden Books, would be appreciated. The space under Isabel’s bed had been crammed with reading books, toys and puzzles generously donated after I put out an appeal on Facebook.

Jennifer, a young mother of two, is part of the community police liaison team of 12 helping build bridges and bring a more peaceful life to the challenged community. The liaison officers and other talented, inspirational identities form the other face of Aurukun, one too often obscured by problems highlighted in the media.

The liaison team combined with continuing prohibition in Aurukun have made an enormous difference in the last year, says the police officer everyone calls Jim. Problems are not going to be overcome quickly, however.

Richard Trudgen in his insightful novel on Arnhem Land, “Why Warriors Lie Down and Die”, pinpoints the core of the problem with the communities. Even when prohibition is in force, the welfare dependency exacerbates the anger in younger males. They have no clear role in life.

Women are adapting to new ways of life easier and are becoming strong leaders in the communities but that makes it even harder for the males. They have no need for hunting skills. Canberra provides. They need build no shelters. Canberra provides. Ways to stand tall are scarce: their attempts to carve a male identity are often illegal and too often violent.

Aurukun is spotlighted for its social difficulties but they are echoed in the welfare belts throughout Australia where work is scarce and the impetus for toil removed. Canberra has become the father figure; paternalistic pride is smothered. The male need to find a role too often erupts in destructive aggression that can subside into despair.

In Aurukun, skills once employed to build and hunt are refined to suit adept break and enter games, or playing cat and mouse in the prohibition game. With a bottle of rum retailing at $300, alcohol smuggling in dry communities is tempting to some residents and occasionally contractors. Violence erupts, inter-clan and domestic.

Authorities and community leaders are disappointed when alcohol gets through but often the outbursts are fuelled not by liquor but by the boiling over of pent-up anger.

A couple of nights ago police were busy trying to quell troubles. Tension had been evident in subdued atmosphere of the town square the next morning but this morning is different.

The square is recognised as the pulse of the community and today the mood is companionable. Relaxed people chat and stroll from the supermarket to the popular bakery that has just opened in the smart new building that houses the post office and Bank of Bendigo.

 With Jennifer is a pint-size packet of energy, grinning infectiously and commenting cheekily. Evelyn Marpoondin is pound-for-pound one of the bravest ladies around, putting her life on the line for her community.

Not so long ago one of the regular female officers had her life threatened by a spear-wielding angry man. Evelyn coolly placed her diminutive frame in front of the target officer and talked the spear wielder into laying down his weapon. The bond between the community liaison officers and the police staff stationed in Aurukun is a strong one.

“We just do our job,” said Evelyn, a mother of two young boys. James reminds her one of the liaison officers had been taken to hospital after being hit on the head with a rock. “You were hit too,” she responds. Jim shakes his head. Not seriously.

A strong bond exists too between the elders and police. The imposing personality of Mavis Ngallametta materialises around the community, symbolising the Aurukun powerful art heritage that spans 50 years.

For 10 years Mavis has presided over the Wik and Kugu Art and Craft Centre. The gallery is rated as an important centre for the creation of authentic and high indigenous sculpture and fibre art.

Born in 1955, Mavis received a community arts achievement award in 2004 for her contribution to schools and community, teaching children weaving and traditional craft. Four years later she went into the bush, walked and searched for long hours and found the traditional ochres and colours used in paintings by her ancestors. She produced her first paintings using authentic indigenous materials and found instant fame. Within a year she found herself in New York art circles. Today her paintings cost around $50,000 and hang in prestigious national, state and private collections in Australia and overseas.

In the gallery, Bevan Naopnan is working with a group of other male carvers. He is putting the finishing touches to a striking crocodile a metre and a half long. Other carvings reflect the creativity of Aurukun.

Jim points out the neat home of Granny Bertha Yankaporta. A sign announces an award for the best kept house yard in Aurukun. We find gentle Granny Bertha sitting on the porch of the centre for senior citizens. Her 81-year-old face breaks into smiles at the sight of Jim.

In 1988 Granny Bertha and her husband Francis had represented Aurukun when indigenous community leaders were gathered to meet Princess Diana. She sighs at the memory.

“She was so beautiful and so tall. I loved her.”

Granny Bertha, now widowed, is the mother of six children. All work in Aurukun. When she was young she did the housework – payment was flour, tea and sugar - for missionaries Jim and Geraldine MacKenzie, who moved to the community in 1925. A group of about 75 Aborigines lived at the mission; communication with the outside world was by lugger until 1937.

In her diary, Gerrie MacKenzie wrote of the people: “I had learnt admiration for their hardiness, their cheerfulness in the face of odds that would have flattened me … The spaciousness and unhurried peace of the land they lived in had claimed both of us.”

One-time housemaid, long-time midwife, Granny Bertha’s gentle hands hold Jim’s arm as they talk; she pats her visitors as we leave. “I love you.” We leave her reluctantly.

Under the missionaries, the people of Aurukun had a market garden, a cattle station, a timber mill and incentives to learn trades. Under Canberra, much of that has disappeared.

Life used to be a hard battle for survival. Men young and old had important roles as workers and providers and went to sleep early at night because they were tired. Now money arrives without effort.

A few work hard and have done well but too many don’t feel the need. They stay up late and get up late. Lack of purpose and pride breed resentment and anger.

Gambling goes hand and hand with idleness in the community, exposing the frailty of the culture of dependency. Some are broke not long after the welfare payments come through.

Increasingly officials are learning that unearned money cannot do what Aurukun needs for many of its residents: restoration of pride. It will not happen overnight but in a year the community has come a long way. Dedicated, practical and brave people from within and without are making a difference.

 

We stopped for a beer at Humpty Doo pub and pulled up again at the Corroboree Park Inn roadhouse. An impressive buffalo head with mighty horns stared glassily at me from the back of a ute.

The rest of the carcass was evidently stuffed under a plastic tarp. Tony was chatting with the driver (above) so I wandered around to say hello.

I nodded at the back of the ute. “Do you do this for a living?”

The driver said he had been shooting buffalo for 40 years and ran a pet food business in town. I learned his name was Terry and shook the bloodied hand he thrust out amiably from the cab.

A little further down the road at the rustic and roomy Bark Hut Inn we chewed on excellent hamburgers and studied the engrossing memorabilia of early buffalo hunting days in the Territory.

Most of the items and information studded around the rustic building came from the days of the legendary Terry Baldwin. We posed with buffalo hunting vehicles and wondered if the Terrys were related.

At Windows on the Wetlands, the admirable information centre beside the Adelaide River, we had learned that feral water buffalo and pigs were a rotten problem for the Kakadu region, rooting and trampling through the natural levee banks that protected the freshwater marshes.

The careers of both bloodied buffalo hunting Terrys were clearly environmentally noble and, we hoped, suitably profitable.

 Not profitable any more, however, is the live export trade decimated by the Gillard Government with its sledgehammer response to a dubious piece of video footage shown on the ABC.  An investigation was warranted but the shrieking of citysiders knee-jerked the Labor government into needlessly ripping the guts out of the northern cattle industry. It still has not recovered.

Now on the edge of ruin is the Gulin Gulin Buffalo Company, a joint venture between the Yolngu tribes that exported about 3000 buffalo annually profitably over 20 years.

The live export ban to Indonesia trade has crushed the trade, mainly because a buffalo’s head is thick. Sad that is for the Aboriginal company; even sorrier is the result for Australia’s fragile northern wetlands.

Feral buffalo numbers are estimated at somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 in northern Australia. They were being kept in check by the live export trade but now they are rocketing by 20% a year while export permits remain unfilled.

Gulin Gulin manager Markus Rathsmann was quoted in The Australian (Sept 30) as saying numbers are “multiplying and multiplying” in what is now a mega land management headache. The government is spending money shooting buffalo from helicopters but not getting the export trade going again despite strong demand in Asia.

The problem is regulations covering the stunning of animals don’t take into account the hard heads of the buffalo. A blow that would stun a cow won’t knock out a buffalo. It just makes it really, really  angry.  To knock it out with pneumatic methods would probably crack its skull, which is not acceptable to Halal slaughter requirements.

New Zealand has electrical stunning technology that could be used but bureaucrats are waffling while hefty water buffalo ravage the wetlands.

How ironic that the greenie-led screams about that gory video have not only caused unnecessary hardship to all and sundry in the export trade. The action they demanded is smashing great tracts of the environment the instigators worship.

The quote is hundreds of years old and its origin is untraceable but it still rings true: “Be careful what you wish for.” The Terrys would probably have a blunter comment.