Borroloola

Now settled (briefly) in Katherine, after four nights in Borroloola, and a night at a bush campsite on the Towns River equidistant (300km) from the two nearest towns (Borroloola and Katherine). After nine nights in our tent, we’ve lashed out on a motel and a restaurant meal – and it’s rather nice.

Borroloola was a wonderful experience. It’s a really interesting town – somewhere about 1000 people, more than 80% of whom are from the four aboriginal clans or the Gulf region. Most of the town is spread out along the one long main street, though a lot of houses are on the other side of the causeway across the river, which means that they can be isolated for weeks at a time during the wet. We brought two days of light rain to the town – the first time any locals can remember it raining in August for more than a decade.

Since last year the pub no longer has a liquor licence – and apparently the town has improved markedly a result. Even the amusingly named ‘Bulk Discount Store’ (which sells small amounts of groceries at wildly inflated prices) only sells cartons of mid-strength beer (and no wine or spirits) – and then only for three hours a day.

The white community are mostly either connected with the huge pastoral stations around the area, the McArthur River zinc mine, government services or the big community of feral fishermen who frequent the estuaries all around the Gulf.

We managed to time our visit to coincide with the Borroloola Show, the Borroloola Rodeo, and a first-ever performance by the Darwin Symphony Orchestra in Borroloola. We met a number of really interesting people, each of whom taught us something of value:

• Bob and Beryl taught us the virtue of patience, having been stranded in Borroloola for three weeks while a problem with their car was diagnosed. By the time we left the car was still not roadworthy, and had been shipped to Mt Isa (about 1000km away!) for more repairs. Through all of this they’ve been calmly philosophical, befriending and helping everyone who passed through the camping ground.
• Daryl, Fred and Sharyn taught us about the subtle art of rodeo, horses and bush friendliness. Daryl now deals horses at Ipswich, after a career in rodeo, horse-breaking and droving all around the country (including the Tumbarumba Rodeo!) Daryl ended up taking charge of the chutes at the Borroloola Rodeo – which he describes as the most disorganised bush rodeo ever – and one of the most enjoyable.
  
• Alison, who has spent a number of years working first in health and then in education services in remote NT communities. She reckons she’s now visited pretty much every community and outstation in the Territory, and has some pretty amazing and strong insights into how much variety there is between communities, and what life is really like in the most remote parts of the NT.
• Warren Snowdon (local MHR for the electorate of Lingiari) and his staffer Vince, who explained why their NT electorate, which takes in all of the NT except for Darwin, and also the Christmas and Cocos Islands, is very different to every other electorate in the country.
• Bob from Bushfires NT, who explained why almost all of the country we’d seen around the Gulf has been recently burnt, and what ‘mosaic burning’ is all about. (Near Wollogorang Station we had passed through a large out-of-control blaze, with no-one but us there to witness it. It turned out that Bob knew about this fire, which he said had been started by a party of drunken blokes at a bush camp somewhere, and all that he could do was to monitor it from satellite imagery as it burnt itself out.)

After leaving Borroloola we visited Caranbirini, which is a beautiful little park with ‘bee-hive’ formations of red sandstone like a mini-Bungle Bungle, and then another few hundred km of dirt up to the Towns River, where we camped beside the river and saw our first croc! At Roper Bar we bought petrol at $1.98 per litre. Astro Boy has done 4,500km so far, including over 1000km on some occasionally challenging dirt – and we’re yet to get a puncture… (famous last words?)

Today we’re doing a cruise at Katherine Gorge, and preparing to start a long walk tomorrow through the Nitmiluk National Park (we may do the five days of the full Jatbula Trail). Life is good.