Last day in the Cobourg Peninsula

Last night's dinner on the deck at sunset was a memorable end to our first full day at the Seven Spirit Bay Wilderness Lodge. Meals throughout the trip have been restaurant quality - but it's the settings that are truly mind blowing (and the free flowing open bar tab each night - wow wow wow!) and this one is probably the best of the best.

We had an easy day today, our last full day at Seven Spirit Bay. We enjoyed a 4WD "safari' in the morning with our favourite guide Maddie looking at some of the natural wonders of the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park surrounding our resort. 

Maddie could make any excursion memorable but she was at her best this morning - making termite activity in the national park enthralling (among other things) - this is an arboreal termite mound apparently .............

... and then she spotted this Banteng cow feeding near the road. They are feral nuisance animals now after their ancestors were released at the abandonment of the Victoria Settlement in the 1840s (along with pigs and Timor ponies and all sorts of other animals and plants that are ecological problems now).

Bentang cows are very timid so we were lucky to see this obscured view of one in the nearby undergrowth.

She found us this bower bird nest too ....... and later we had a sighting of an actual bower bird.........

More Turkey Bush - and another Turkey Bush story. Maddie's was better than the previous one we'd heard - and this bush was flowering at camera height!!

This is our favourite guide, Maddie, enthralling us all with her descriptions of the fresh water mangrove forests and how amazing the paperbarks are for providing vital medicines, handy tools and also supplies of fresh water in desperate times. She really can make any subject absolutely enthralling and quite funny too!.

A beautiful, lush spot in this otherwise dry, "fire farmed" Savannah forest.......

At the end of our walk this morning we came upon the Nypa Palm "gallery", one of only four locations in Australia where these quite fickle plants can be found growing..........

It was quite lovely to stay a while here, enjoy the lushness and observe the prolific birdlife in the area.

We'd obviously worked hard enough this morning to deserve a very special lunch event at a beach a bit south of our lodge - at Low Point (but definitely NOT a low point in our day!).

Staff had erected a marquee for us on the beach, set up a long table with all the trimmings including linen this and linen that - and cooked us a superb bar-b-que lunch with all the extras. Of course there was the usual full open bar as well (transported there in big eskies).

Not a bad beach setting as a backdrop! ..................

After lunch we were taken out in one of the lodge's state of the art fishing vessels (with our own driver guide) for an afternoon's fishing adventure around the sheltered bays of Port Essington. It was just David and Ro and me and Rob with Norm, our Aboriginal fishing guide in our boat........

Unfortunately the winds were too strong to go too far into the exposed waters of the port. We all got drenched and a bit too rocked about trying to venture too far out of the more sheltered bays. In the end Norm decided to keep us safe and closer into shore for our fishing adventures today.

I caught the first fish - woohoo - a Queen fish (of course). She was ginormous but not suitable to keep (the lodge's chef makes the decision about which fish will be kept and which will be released on any given day (a no waste policy!). My Queenie was released, I'm pleased to say, after giving me all the fun of catching her!

Rob made a great catch too........

... a very jumpy barracuda - also released!

Norm was a taciturn guide but an absolute gun fisherman - I loved his lure knotting techniques. We kept him busy with our inexperience and the rate at which our fish were biting. Bless him!

David was next - hooking this barracuda after losing 2 fish at the last minute as they were being brought into the boat.

After persisting with a few lure fails Ro finally landed this mackerel - her personal fish totem.... such a wonderful way to end off our day at Seven Spirit Bay.

We had another round of sunset drinks and canapes on the sunset deck of the lodge tonight and one last chance to enjoy a superb evening meal with a lovely bunch of people we've shared this amazing adventure with. It's back to Darwin tomorrow!!

Seven Spirit Bay

Due to the impassable roads Outback Spirit flew us by light plane from Mount Borradaile to their Seven Spirit Bay Resort on the Cobourg Peninsula yesterday. 

So instead of an 8 hour bumpy bus ride on corrugated dirt roads and river crossings we flew in 12 seater Cessnas - making it a 45 minute trip to the northern most tip of the Northern Territory over some of the most spectacular wetlands and salt pans of Western Arnhem Land - a truly spectacular trip!

This was the second Cessna for our group - showing the rough expanse of the Mt Borradaile air strip beyond..........

Belted up ready to go ......

Flying over Mt Borradaile and the wetlands where we'd done our sunset cruise the night before............

Seven Spirit Bay is an Outback Spirit Resort overlooking Coral Bay in Port Essington in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park. Like the other resorts we've stayed in it is comprised of individual cabins joined by bush tracks to the main lodge where meals are served and where guests can enjoy a drink, socialize or swim, or just laze by the pool.This is the most luxurious of all the lodges we have stayed in so far.

Our eco cabin has no glass windows - instead it has whole walls of screened metal louvres open to the sea breezes - perfect!!

But the bathroom has solid walls!

We took a walk around the resort grounds yesterday afternoon - and came across a small crocodile on this stretch of beach. It scurried back into the water when it heard us approaching!

Down by the boat jetty we were mesmerised by the performance of this school of sharks swimming around and around the platform where we were standing, looking incredibly elegant and friendly - at least seven of them. They gave us a wonderful performance. We learnt later they were Lemon Sharks - very friendly towards people they say - the labradors of the shark world!

Around 6pm most days on this trip we gather for drinks as the sun sets. It's especially good because Outback spirit runs an open bar wherever we stay! The Seven Spirit Bay sunset rated very highly compared to all the others we have enjoyed so far.

This morning we headed to our meeting point at the lodge quite early ready for our boat cruise around Port Essington.

Port Essington is expansive - at least 15klm wide and at least 3 times that long. Our boat travelled at around 50klm an hour for sections of today's cruise creating lots of up and down movement and sea spray against the headwind - exciting stuff!

Our first stop was at the site of the ill fated Victoria Settlement, the British Government's third attempt at colonising Northern Australia and establishing a viable port settlement. Victoria Settlement only lasted 11 years but was eventually abandoned due to deaths, disease, starvation, cyclones, malaria and almost every other plague known to man (or woman). 

It seems that the settlement's "governor" John MacArthur (son of the Sydney colony's John and Elizabeth) forged positive relationships with the local Iwaidja people and governed the colony in a fairly enlightened way for the times. However, this part of the world was just not the right place for a port or for Europeans to settle and thrive in the 1840s.

We walked to the site of the original settlement, very little of which remains to this day after a hundred and eighty years or so of extreme weather, destruction, plundering and other forces of nature.

This was the settlement's underground gunpowder magazine......

These substantial chimneys are the only remaining signs of the settlement's "married quarters".

This is what remains of the settlement's hospital........

At least it had a great view........

There was a lot of arrogance and stupidity on the part of the British Government in their decision making and resourcing of this settlement but we were left feeling in awe of the resourcefulness and strength of the settlers themselves given the challenges they faced in these harsh conditions.

We returned to the boat then .........

..... cruising then as far south as West and East Bays - enjoying a "mobile lunch" in the calm waters of Barrow Bay..........

...... and then returning north to Reef Point to admire the rainbow cliffs with their richly defined layers of ochres and bauxite (hopefully no mining will be allowed here!).

A view of Seven Spirit Bay Lodge from our boat as we returned to the Coral Bay jetty....

As we disembarked our amazing tour guide and boat captain Maddie spied the resident Lemon Sharks and gave them a huge welcome. One of the sharks in particular loves having its back rubbed by Maddie with this broom. We all fell in love with the adorable, knowledgeable, quirky and capable Maddie on this trip so this was a perfect way to end our morning of cruising the Cobourg Peninsula with her!

Mount Borradaile 2

Thursday was a spectacular day. We joined five others from the group who were prepared to do one of the more difficult walks in the morning, allowing us to see another 5-6 spectacular art filled caves at the higher levels of the sandstone outcrops surrounding Mount Borradaile. 

The climbing involved was quite easy for us but the agility required to navigate slippery rocks and big crevices was a little challenging at times. The guides were excellent - ensuring their rather elderly tour group stayed safe and experienced a wonderful, awe inspiring cultural experience for their efforts.

This ancient beautifully incised message stick coated in a bush preservative was found in this cave.

This was the weavers' cave ..........

A close up of the women in the weavers' sitting position. The bottom figure has rarrk work (hatching) on the body.

More finely detailed delicate work - up close. We were literally crawling along a ledge less than a metre away from these paintings.

It is thought that the painted spots on the breasts of these women indicate they were lactating!

The only way to see some of these works ......

A beautifully detailed macropod .......

This one is "celery man"........

Our new friend Jenny, not looking too worried about the big rock jump she is about to make .....

We reached the top of this rock outcrop eventually and had 360o views of this massive property.

Our last stop was a large burial cave - still with many human bones in situ. With great respect we carefully navigated the cleared areas in the cave to take some time to appreciate the huge array of paintings on the cave's roof - quite an awesome experience.....

We were able to finish off our challenging and rewarding walk with a swim in a local freshwater (guaranteed no crocs) waterhole. I could have stayed in this perfect pool of crystal clear, lotus fringed water all day! 

This is our one picture of our driver, guide, general all round great bloke who is also a great storyteller and a very funny man. His name is David. He's out of uniform in this pic but the excuse is he was joining us for a swim!

Later in the afternoon a sunset cruise on the extensive wetlands of Cooper Creek was planned. Cooper Creek eventually forms part of the East Alligator River system but around here it forms a huge area of water in the wet season and now in the dry is home to multitudes of birds: egrets, herons, Jesus birds, jabirus, mango geese, sea eagles, bee eaters, finches, whistling kites and ducks and yes, plenty more crocodiles......

Our guides made the cruise a very special experience with an open bar, delicious nibbles, a very informed commentary on everything we were seeing and then the most amazing (another one) sunset and magical view of Mount Borradaile (known as Awunbarna to the Amurdak people) in the last rays of the setting sun.