Places We Like to Nomad: Arnhem Land - Entering God's Own Country

Arnhem Land, with its fabled past of buffalo hunting, trepang (sea cucumbers) collecting and failed settlement ventures, is tucked away about as remote as it can be, in the Northern Territory. Sparsely populated by Indigenous communities, this region requires an easily obtained permit to visit. We applied for a week's stay in Cobourg National Park, right at the northern tip of the Cobourg Peninsula.

No fuel is available at our destination. The trip from Jabiru via Cahill's Crossing to Smith Point in the park, requires an additional jerrycan of fuel and every last drop from our extended fuel tanks to cover the 800km journey.

We drop tyre pressures to deal with the ferocious corrugated sections of road that give us a hammering to remember.

Cahill's Crossing is tidal, with tides up to 6 metres or more, so we time it right for low tide when we cross over early in the morning raising our hats to the crocs lounging in the water beside the crossing.

The road gives us a rough welcome as we pass spectacular wetlands and rocky outcrops of the East Alligator region.

Later, we turn off via the Murgenella road to encounter some better, graded sections as we cross the Park boundary. This is wonderfully wild country. We spot Timor ponies, a dingo, and wild herds of Banteng, originally an Indonesian cattle species now extinct there.

Seven hours later we reach Smith Point bushcamp for a well earned rest and chilled glass of white wine. Our campsite is a very generous size, nestled behind the beach. As we settle in, flights of brolgas pass overhead on their daily commute from feeding in the wetlands to their evening roost. Regular visitors were a displaying male dove and a flighty fantail.

The dawn chorus was the cooing of dozens of doves serenading us as we went to the beach to catch the sunrise.

For the next few days, we explore the bays and beaches all around us, following turtle tracks as they haul up at high tide to lay eggs in beach sand nests. Turtle life is not easy. Crocs can crunch their carapace, and sand goannas, snakes and just about every other creature love to dig up the succulent turtle eggs.

Frigatebirds, those amazing aerodynamic wizards, float above us. An osprey glides past with a fish which it eats on a nearby branch.

Life is great. We enjoy drinks close to the navigation cairn at Point Smith as we perch above the nearby beach with its dramatic, eroded rocks.

On Sunday, we meet our guide Trevor at the Black Point boat ramp to head off with 4 other clients on a charter boat day tour.

Our 7am start sets us off on a lovely, calm sea in the cool of the morning. Trevor deftly catches a queenfish and a trevally in two casts and despatches them for the bait bin.

Our first destination is the ruined, former colonial settlement of Victoria on the inlet of Port Essington. In the 1800s, multiple attempts were made by the English to set up outposts to keep the Dutch and French at bay.

Victoria settlement, the fourth of such settlement attempts, lasted from 1838-1849, but succumbed to malaria, general maladies, and devastating cyclones. In its heyday, the shoreline of the settlement would have been a colourful sight of encamped Macassan (Sulawesi, Indonesia) traders whose presence predated the English by 500 years, Indigenous locals, and English military (the men in woollen dress uniform, the ladies in six layers of petticoats).

In its day the land was cleared, but 180 years later as we land it is thickly wooded, just poignant ruins, a path meandering between them, and birds flitting from tree to tree beside the ruins of the old married quarters. The Macassans planted Tamarind trees for culinary use, and now large specimens of these trees have long outlasted the planters.

A sad footnote is the cemetery where most of the colony, including all the children, lie buried. The last two burials were the ship's surgeon and assistant surgeon: a sure time to leave is when no doctors are left.

Ships were infested with cockroaches. The only way to be rid of them was to scuttle the boat and let saltwater kill their eggs and force out the live cockroaches to swim to shore where the Indigenous would catch them as novel protein. Then the sailors repaired the scuttled ship to refloat it.

For lunch we stopped across the bay at Record Point, named after the English settlers' ceremony of burying a bottle there containing a message claiming the land for England, just in case anyone thought otherwise.

In the boiling noonday sun, we headed out to three different reef spots for an instant fishing bonanza. Gen immediately latches onto a sandshark, then catches a tasty, golden snapper. I'm hauling in trevally and a beautiful flowery rock cod. Really Big, 2 metre lemon sharks break our lines. Others on the boat catch stunningly spotted Coral trout and a Spanish flag or stripey fish.

We do feel a pang of regret, although most fish are released, because it feels like we have intruded and yanked these beauties out of their reef, filletted the choicest then ignominiously tossed the carcasses into the sea for the sharks.

What a day! We return home, the boat bumping and thumping over the rising waves. We are both sunburnt, but very happy.

Next day, we go on the wetland walk where we enter dense thickets of pandanus, past jungly noises of unseen banteng cattle. A green oriole perches in the open, then we see a cockatoo comically raising its splendid sulphur crest, and a rainbow bee-eater in all its glorious colour.