Explore the unique, sustainable tourism offerings in the Northern Territory’s Top End, from turtle nesting to cultural tours, writes Neil Porten
The Northern Territory’s Top End steams in the wet season and bakes during the Dry. This March was the second wettest on record, so even in early May evaporating waterways are green-tinged, as viewed on the flight into Darwin. Brown rivers, white floodplains, red and pink sandstone escarpments, neat patchworks of market gardens and lush orchards catch the eye. But it is the fires, countless square miles of scorched black savanna and pluming smoke hundreds of metres high, that define the landscape.
Rain and fire, the sustaining twin elements of the Top End. In the few days I’m here — watching flatback turtles nesting at sunset, waterhole hopping in Litchfield National Park, exploring Kakadu — it’s clear that themes of resilience, diversity and local hospitality are key to a sustainable visitor experience.
Turtles by the sea
On a fast boat called Olive Ridley, named for Australia’s smallest marine turtle, Njulbitjlk (Bare Sand Island) is 90 minutes southwest of Darwin. Excitement is high for the 20 passengers on board for this first sunset tour of the turtle nesting season. Tour operator Sea Darwin – Sea Tiwi is owned by a corporation of Tiwi Islands clans and works with traditional owners the Larrakia to access this remote and beautiful dot in the Timor Sea.
Njulbitjlk (Bare Sand Island) is 90 minutes southwest of Darwin. Photo / Tourism NT
Our guides, marine science PhD candidates Natalie and Julia, lead us ashore. Natalie heads along the beach in search of turtle activity while Julia takes the group up the dunes for an orientating view of the low-lying island.
Almost immediately, Natalie is in radio contact: she’s found a flatback turtle hatchling. This day-old little blue-green wonder, all flippers whirling like a wind-up toy, is going to need all its frantic energy and a lot of luck to survive: only about one in a 1000 does.
Turtle encounters on Bare Sand Island. Photo / Tourism NT
We watch the setting sun colour the sea and sand copper, before following a dual flipper track a short way into the dunes. A flatback female digs a nest with delicate alternating scoops of each back flipper. Under red headlamp light, our group hold their collective breath as cue ball-sized eggs plop by ones and twos into the deep hole. Her egg laying done and covered, this turtle’s mothering is finished and she wearily scrabbles a path back into the ocean.
We scramble warily back on to the boat, under a dome of stars and a red fingernail moon, as Natalie and Julia scan the beach for the island’s resident male crocodile. Thankfully, there is no incident of a croc in the night-time to spoil a most magical evening.
Rob Woods is changing the world one personal conversation, and three enchanting waterholes, at a time. His small-group tour business Ethical Adventures’ Litchfield National Park day trip focuses on biodiversity, with the bonus attraction of cooling dips along the way. At the first bathing spot, Rob sets up a swim-up cafe serving hot drinks and his partner Tracey’s moreish mango muffins.
Ethical Adventures’ Litchfield National Park day trip focuses on biodiversity, with cooling dips along the way. Photo / Tourism NT
Rob explains the role fire plays in the ecology of the Top End’s savanna woodland. Lightning, prevalent in the heat-charged storms in the build-up to the Wet, starts many fires. Aboriginals lit fires to flush out prey. Fire-resistant native trees benefit from the burning as the speargrass and any introduced competitor species are cleared. Now, fires are set deliberately in the early months of the Dry before the speargrass gets too tall and thick and dangerously combustible. Grasping the idea of this fire-management practice takes a moment, knowing the devastating effects of wildfires across the planet.
The water level at Wangi Falls is still too high — too “croc-y” — for swimming yet, but the year-round flow over the cascade is pretty and the water’s source, Tabletop Swamp (a “secret place” Rob takes us to later for refreshments and quiet contemplation), illustrates the park’s delicately balanced ecosystem.
“Litchfield has a rich natural and cultural landscape for people to dive into”, Rob says, as I dive into the pool at Buley Rockhole, watched by a Mertens’ water monitor lizard perched on a sunny rock.
At Florence Falls, fish forage in the deep green pool beneath the double cascades. The loop walk back to the carpark is like a choreographed theme-park ride: tropical bush and babbling brook; a golden tree snake curled by the track; savanna woodland with windblown speargrass; synchronised birdsong — a warble to the left, a cooing to the right.
Our ethical adventure ends at the Tolmer Falls lookout where water falls in a 35m-long ribbon beneath a natural rock bridge and billion-year-old cliffs glow pink in the setting sun.
Ethical Adventures offers engaging, fun, and educational experiences that showcase the diversity of the Top End.
Kakadu bounty
Kakadu, Australia’s second-largest national park, is traditionally owned, with the Bininj/Mungguy indigenous community maintaining their long and deep connection to the land.
Aboriginal-owned Kakadu Tourism operates in the park and works with other small indigenous businesses. Out of Cooinda Lodge in the heart of Kakadu, the bush tucker tour’s gentle amble is a great entree to the park’s attractions.
“Do you know which tree has the best food?” asks Kevin, our bush tucker guide.
If bad Dad jokes give you a headache, try a few crushed green ants for relief. These six-legged nutrient packs are also chock-full of protein, vitamin C and iron. Or you can lick their behinds for a honey-flavoured treat.
The white base of the pandanus leaf can be chewed for its moisture. The Kakadu or billygoat plum, olive sized and yellow when ripe, has very high levels of vitamin C and antioxidants — the taste is zingy, appley. The heart of the cabbage palm is eaten after being burned in a fire and peeled.
Kapok trees flower during the freshwater crocodile mating season. When the egg-shaped seedpods form you know it’s time to dig for croc eggs in the sands of the river.
Kevin’s knowledge of the bountiful Kakadu pantry is definitely no joke.
Down by the billabong
Murumburr elder Jessie Alderson sits cross-legged on a mat in the shade of the old mango tree. Her hands work strands of dyed pandanus leaves, copper, gold and maroon coloured, a bracelet in the making. We are here on the mat with her, and her granddaughter Jessica, having a go at the deceptively tricky craft.
You can stay here at Kakadu Billabong Safari Camp in comfortable tents and huts, or spend just a few hours experiencing how custodians of this country live today.
Sixty years ago, Jessica tells us, Americans came here on safari, mostly to hunt water buffalo. The mango trees are at least that old and their fruit heralds the return of another important food, the magpie geese, Jessica’s favourite.
Who doesn’t like to talk about food? Pig-nosed turtle — “fatty and stringy”, says Jessica — is delicious roasted underground with silver-tipped leaves. Fortunately, we get to eat too, damper from a camp oven and fresh barramundi from the billabong, both cooked over coals. I tear juicy morsels of the fish hot from the skeleton.
Four generations of the family live here. The camp business is, Jessica says, a way to provide present and future generations with a means to live on country and maintain traditions — hunting, gathering and “talking stories” with visitors. It’s a simple sustainability story in itself.
Drawing on the landscape
Bininj man James Morgan has been a tour guide and a ranger in Kakadu. Now he runs Yibekka Kakadu Tours, his own company, in part to inspire others in his community to start and run their own businesses. His tour of the Burrungkuy (Nourlangie) Aboriginal rock art site is an opportunity to spend time with a thoughtful and articulate sharer of stories about a place deeply connected to his family.
The walk begins gently enough in the savanna woodland before the path steepens over bare sandstone and quartz outcrops on the way to the Anbangbang gallery. At a djung, or story site, James points to a rock balanced on a ledge below the escarpment summit. This rock represents a detail from a tale of forbidden love. At the first rock art site, under a sheltering overhang, James explains how the images depict things seen first in the surrounding landscape.
Located in the heart of Kakadu lies a world heritage rock shelter full of ancient art and stories.
Climbing to the Nawurlandja lookout, the panoramic view takes in a green carpet of lowlands and a horizon of high escarpment. Awesome electrical storms over this highland, in the build-up to the Wet, are the origin of the story of the creation ancestor Namarrkon, the Lightning Man.
Standing here, listening to the breeze in the trees, feeling the heat of the black rock underfoot, the reasoning of earlier traditional owners for opening up Kakadu to more visitors resonates. It was their belief, James says, in the value of experience fostering respect, leading to a desire to preserve and protect.
It’s a faith in the future that is worth repaying.
Checklist
DARWIN, AUSTRALIA
GETTING THERE
Fly non-stop from Auckland to Sydney or Brisbane with Air NZ, Qantas and Jetstar, then catch a domestic flight to Darwin. Sydney to Darwin is about 4 hours 40 minutes, and Brisbane to Darwin about 4 hours 20 minutes.
