Our last night before hitting Darwin and I decided on a little treat – my thank you to the pilot for flying me around Australia. My little splurge was Wildmans Wilderness Retreat, a little lurury nestled in a slice of private land in the middle of Mary River National Park, just West of Darwin.
From above, it simply looked like a bunch of sheds. However, on landing and on the first strip directly in front of the lodge, and being shown our grand and spacious “tent” larger than some apartments I’ve lived in, we realised we had found a place we were unlikely wanting to leave.
The highlight, other than the indulgence, was Peter, our guide. Son of English migrants turned Pearl Farmers, and a born and bred Territorian, Peter lived and breathed the Northern Territory landscape and its inhabitants – history, geology, flora and fauna. He was a wealth of knowledge, dry sarcasm and information. Specially about crocs. He had a knack for finding little blurry spots in history, little unknowns, and burrowing through historical information, such as the old journals of those who first colonised the Territory, to fill in the gaps.
It was he that shared the story of the airstrip we landed on. Before Kakadu and Jabairu, and all the other strips litter the Territory, that now there was only one strip. Ours. It was built by Connellan, who was one of the first western men to come into the heart of the Territory. The strip was built to allow safari hunters come to the wilderness and hunt buffalo, whose hides used in drive belts, fuelled England’s industrial revolution.
With hunting now history, the flood plains are now a haven for birds. While not accessible at the end of the dry season, we drove to the edge of the plains to watch the sunset. Nibbling on cheese and sipping out bubbles was grand. The colours spreading across the sky. But then the explosion. All the birds, thousands of them, upped and flew home for the evening. The magpie geese honking, the colours turning from pink to purple. A cacophony of light, colour and sound.
Flyabout Australia 