Outback oasis

AFTER the Big Wet, Jenny Stevens experiences a luxury outback adventure that has her sipping fine wine metres away from grumpy buffaloes and wild brumbies.

Aussie safari ... Bamurru offers its guests "wild bush luxury" but the Northern Territory's inhabitants are right on the camp's doorstep. Picture: Jenny Stevens

THE dragonflies signal the end of the Wet, Territorians say.

So their merry dance over the surface of the pool is a good sign, even though lightning plays in the clouds on the horizon and distant thunder rumbles across the Mary River flood plain.

Despite the dinner hour, we're firmly anchored to the lounges in the outdoor pavilion of Bamurru Plains camp, lulled into inactivity by chilled glasses of fine white wine and the crackling flames in
the fire pit nearby.

It's muggy still, and the overhead fans are valiantly moving the air, though not banishing all the mozzies at ground level.

The silence would be total if not for the magpie geese squabbling over nesting rights in the marsh 100m away, the call of barking owls in the savannah woodland bordering the camp, and the mating calls of frogs.

Yet the silence is deceptive, for the night is alive.

First to appear are the little agile wallabies, timidly nibbling at the mown grass along the camp's boundaries.

Then, to our astonishment, enters a roll call of Northern Territory wildlife: mean-looking buffaloes with wicked horns and the will to use them if you get between them and their calves; skittish brumbies, with the stallion nipping at their heels to hurry them away from the human smell; and, finally, a conga line of wild pigs, with a sow and her new-born litter bringing up the rear.

It's as if an animal wrangler has been calling the shots: "Cue the buffs! Bring on the horses! Where are those piglets? Get a move on!''

We go back to grazing on the chef's Territory appetisers - oysters in the shell, scallops, camel meat skewers - careful to pace ourselves, as another splendid meal awaits us.

This is "wild bush luxury'', Bamurru's mantra, and after one night we've tasted croc san choy bow; buffalo fillet with berry reduction sauce; fish cooked in paperbark over the coals of the open fire; and chilli mud crabs that we hammered with gusto to get the last shred of meat (and damn the mess that covers us and the table).

The camp, the wine and the food may be luxurious, and the prices sky-high, but the experience is earthy, and that's the way Bemurru Plains likes it.

I can't help but wonder, though, what some of the well-heeled English and American tourists think when they step down from their helicopters and planes into this Australian bush experience.

Bamurru is a newly opened camp on the 300sqkm Swim Creek Station, a working buffalo property three hours by bitumen and dirt road east of Darwin - and a world away from civilisation.

Kakadu, with its marked tourist roads, Aboriginal rock-art galleries, croc warning signs, camp sites and motel complexes, is further east on the bitumen.

The Bamurru experience is wild, and determinably so. A brown snake lives in the grass between the lodge and the heli drop-off area; the strong smell of buffalo wafts over the thick bush nudging the camp roads; huge crocs live in the swamp and prey on the geese and the buffaloes, taking a huge toll; and a harmless python has found a home near the lodge entrance. It's live and let live.

The accommodation doesn't conform to the usual five-star hotel standards, either.

The three safari suites available so far are comfortable but spartan. They're angled to face the flood plain, and have a large sleeping area with just a bed and table and the choice of air-conditioning and glass screens or fans and fly screens.

A verandah has two easy chairs and a small table for binoculars, bird books and morning coffee; the dense fly-screening gives one-way vision, so the animals are unaware of the humans inside.

An Aussie touch is a corrugated-iron ensuite bathroom that has a sinful rain-shower with unlimited water, thanks to the Wet, and a floor-to-ceiling tree trunk that holds the tap connections.

During turn-down, both rooms are lit by tea lights, a lovely touch allowing myriad stars in the night sky to sparkle in unison. Electric lighting is minimal (which is fine until you want to look in a mirror) and powered by large solar panels at the camp entrance.

Once or twice a day there are excursions, some at first light and others in the late afternoon, when animals become active.

You need a four-wheel drive to get close to the buffaloes, who glower from thickets or wallows and watch every move. Their reputation for ugly tempers is well deserved, and their annual round-ups make them even meaner.

But when they thrash the undergrowth with their horns and come away wearing a necklace of greenery and flowers, they look more like Swiss cows, if only fleetingly.

The new river boat wasn't up and running when we were there, but it will be used for fishing and croc-spotting - the latter with guaranteed sightings, as the Mary River flood plain has the highest percentage of crocs in the Territory, if not the world.

The airboat takes you into the 30km of swamp grass with its tens of thousands of magpie geese, whistling ducks, pygmy geese, egrets, kites, ibis, water monitors, water pythons and deadly crocs.

The boat is noisy, but it doesn't frighten off the birds, who nest next to the flattened reed highway in the sea of grass. It also gets you into the melaleuca swamps, eerily still and so heavy with vegetation that the black water rises and falls like oil as you pass.

Underneath the mat of water lilies and decaying vegetation lurks who knows what - but, like the buffaloes, you won't see a predator until it strikes.

The swamp's expanse is staggering. Soon, each kilometre begins to looks like the previous ten, and you can only wonder at the guts of the explorers who crossed this land with despair as their constant companion.

All the more reason to have someone who knows the Territory take you there, to see it for yourself.

You wouldn't believe it otherwise.

The writer was a guest of Tourism NT.

The Sunday Telegraph