‘World’s End’: The remote part of Australia the British failed to colonise

It’s reasonable to expect the Cobourg Peninsula will be chock full of wild things but a glass of chilled champagne on arrival has a way of softening reality.

So we’re radiating calm beside a lagoon pool, plumped into cushions overlooking a pristine cove in a wilderness resort that can only be accessed by boat or private air charter, entirely unprepared for what follows.

Poolside at Seven Spirit Bay on the western tip of Arnhem Land.

“We have large crocodiles, lots of them, so there will be no walking on the beaches,” begins Seven Spirit Bay resort manager, Jodi Newton. There’s no going on the boat ramp either “unless you want to be an entree plate for a waiting crocodile or meet one of the big boys” – the bronze whalers and lemon sharks conditioned for an easy feed having trailed the fishing vessels back to shore.

“As long as you’ve got someone to sacrifice with you, it’s fine,” quips my companion, but Newton has already moved on.

“Snakes? We have lots of them,” she chirrups. There are night tiger and whip snakes (“very fast black snakes”) and olive pythons nestling under the staff quarters. “It’s the circle of life,” she soothes, then recommends a move to the bar for a green ant gin and tonic.

This surreal experience comes at the end of a day flying east to west, right across Arnhem Land, over a huge chunk of land that bends backwards towards Indonesia along the rim of Port Essington in the Northern Territory.

It’s hard to pinpoint Seven Spirit Bay in a small twin-propeller plane as you drop from a cloudless sky to land on a strip of red dirt. It’s the middle of nowhere and strangely comforting to see that dense green bush has been pinned back at the airstrip perimeter by three man-made structures: a shady corrugated lean-to signposted as “International Airport”, an outhouse, and a four-wheel drive safari vehicle. Phil Woolaston is seated in the driver’s seat.

Seven Spirit Bay: you almost forget the area was once known as ‘World’s End’.

“Everyone gets here eventually,” he says, noting our late arrival. “What did you do while waiting?” I ask. “Went fishing,” he answers.

Seven Spirit Bay ranks in the upper echelons of remote fishing destinations with guests lodged in 24 discrete air-conditioned villas, or “habitats”, adorned with smart ensuite bathrooms. The main lodge has supreme views, tropical manicured gardens, a good restaurant, and is so contented that you almost forget the area was once known as “World’s End”.

Indigenous people experienced two failed attempts by the British to settle this remote part of northern Australia. A third settlement was established at Port Essington in 1838, but after 11 years plagued by natural disasters and disease it was abandoned in 1849. The ruins of Victoria (an hour by boat from Seven Spirit Bay) are all that’s left of a failed settlement on country that remains virtually untouched by Europeans.

“There hasn’t been a foot on most of this coast for decades,” says Woolaston, neglecting to count his own. Woolaston is always guiding tour guests deep into the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park to look for wild things – buffalo, banteng, Timor ponies – and he’s rarely disappointed on the days that he swaps the neatly-tended lawns of the resort for unexplored wilderness.

“There hasn’t been a foot on most of this coast for decades.”

In April, he wandered along an unknown track and stumbled upon an ancient Aboriginal site where grinding stones and war clubs had been left discarded nobody knows when. The tools are still in perfect condition.

“I left it all alone,” he confides. “It’s not ours to take.”

There are sacred places that Woolaston will never go in a land that’s moved from Stone Age to Digital Age without change. “If someone from 300 years ago came here, you could plonk them up on a hill, and they’d know exactly where they are,” he says. Walk five kilometres one way and you’ll come to a big open meadow where a spring comes out of the ground. Walk in the opposite direction and you’ll find a clearing the size of a football field, a midden with shells laid out for miles.

The traditional owners, the Arrarrkbi people, hold knowledge here but Woolaston’s understanding of survival is something to behold. A discovery tour of the food pantry behind the wall of green that wraps around Seven Spirit Bay is an absolute necessity.

Inside one of the Habitat Villas at Seven Spirit Bay.Credit: Steve Strike

Who knew that a pandanus is much more than a kind-of spiky, screwy, piney thing? Its fleshy seeds yield water in the dry season, the core can be roasted or eaten raw or fermented as a medicine for body wellness, its leaves dyed for weaving, and its hollow trunk fashioned into a coal carrier for lighting fires.

Other tree barks will make a canoe or warm the aching belly of a birth mother. The sac of the hairy processionary caterpillar can be used as a bandage with a soothing paste and the yellow rooted kerosene tree will make bush string or fish poison. Spear shafts, hot packs, resin boiled in a bailer shell as adhesive, twines for ropes and seeds for contraception: the practical resources of life on country are simply astonishing.

We are contemplating the magic of knowledge through millennia while standing next to a billabong. Water lilies lift delicate purple heads from muddy waters, insects flit, birds sing. All is harmonious until we hear Woolaston’s words above all the wild things. “Stay back from the edge, big things are in there, and you won’t see them first.”

There are many enthralling realisations on this tour but the fact that a lightning-fast saltwater crocodile can only run in a straight line tops the list. “Run in a circle, that’s what I’ve always been told,” says Woolaston, and he’s not joking.

Moments later, walking along the curve of white beach, we finally see what all the fuss is about. A saltie lurks above the tide line. It’s a killer handbag, green tinged with cream trimmings, sliding on stumpy legs into a choppy sea. It’s a croc alright, apparently harmless in snap-happy ways, but we’re not testing the water.

“They survived the great extinction, probably more than one,” reflects Woolaston. We are all just visitors here.

THE DETAILS

Stay

Habitat villas offer high standards of comfort and privacy scattered in tropical native forest at the edge of the wilderness at Coral Bay. The tariff, from $2725 a villa per night (for two people) includes all meals, marine wildlife spotting cruises, 4WD wilderness safaris, historical tours to Victoria Settlement, estuary and bluewater fishing adventures, guided nature walks and birdwatching. Air transfers not included. See sevenspiritbay.com.au

The writer was a guest of Tourism NT.