Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
One morning one of the guides found and killed a common brown snake,
which is unusually dangerous despite its proletarian name. We were all, as a
consequence, nervous as we penetrated deeper into this lonely land.
In the early mornings the spiderwebs that festoon the tree fern forests of
Arnhem Land are covered with dew. The ferns, stumpy and closely spaced,
dominate a green and gold landscape. Apart from the grasses and the occa-
sional eucalyptus tree, it could be a world before the time of fl owering plants.
Indeed, it looks as if a dinosaur might blunder through it at any moment.
As the sun rises and the dew burns of , the landscape is revealed in greater
detail, alien and still strangely silent.
Arnhem Land covers about 75,000 square kilometers, and is home to
only about 16,000 tribespeople. One can drive for hours along the muddy
tracks and see no sign of human occupation. We did stumble on an encamp-
ment of sketchy houses and lean-tos that had been abandoned days earlier
when the people who lived in them had disappeared into the bush.
The sparseness of human settlement was paralleled by a lack of wildlife,
especially compared with the thriving birds and animals of Kakadu National
Park that lay immediately to the west. In fi ve days we saw a few feral water
buf alo, a dingo, and a solitary tawny frogmouth that was perched on a tree
and turned its dazzled yellow gaze toward our headlamps.
As we headed across the drier plains on the southern leg of our trip
one of the reasons for the lack of wildlife became clear. Our guides kindled
branches and tossed them from the truck, leaving a series of blazes behind
us. I protested, saying that I felt like Smokey the Bear in reverse. But I was
ignored: the new generation of young people living in Arnhem Land tends
to set fi res at seeming random, with no notion of how far or how fast the fi res
might spread.
Fires have always been part of Australia's ecology, but the paleontologi-
cal record shows that layers of charcoal from widespread burning increased
in thickness and in frequency with the arrival of humans 45,000 years ago.
The fi rst Europeans to arrive in southeastern Australia were astonished by
the mastery of fi re shown by the Aborigines. They set controlled fi res, each
covering an acre or so, in a patchwork pattern that changed each year. Then,
