Travel the Top End

Immerse yourself in the eerie colonial ruins of Victoria Settlement and experience the rugged tropical landscape of Garig Gunak Barlu National Park, fringed with white beaches and teeming with all manner of birds, fish, crocodiles and unique Aussie wildlife.

CATHERINE LAWSON

Back in 1838 when the British Government boldly built the Victoria Settlement, they had no idea that isolation, malaria, cyclones and sunken supply ships would bury a quarter of its pioneers on this utterly faraway Top End coastline. The settlement’s survivors lasted just 11 years before weighing anchor and fleeing their nightmare existence, and today the Victoria Settlement crumbles atop lofty limestone cliffs, shaded by moptop cabbage palms and paperbarks.

With a rich mangrove river on one side and lovely white sand beaches on the other, this idyllic spot that the Madjunbalmi people called Murrumurrdmulya overlooks the calmest of Port Essington’s bright, blue bays. Today it looks like a kind of paradise, but life in 1838 — without regular supplies of food, medicine and bug spray — was extremely challenging and survival precarious. In the first year of settlement, a cyclone claimed 10 lives and levelled all buildings. Gardening efforts failed, supply ships arrived weeks and months too late, malaria was rife and few children survived. In all, a quarter of the population lies buried in the cemetery.

The Madjunbalmi people most certainly supplemented the pioneers’ diet with their bush tucker, receiving clothes and tobacco in exchange, but they paid for it with their lives when malaria broke out, perishing in similar numbers alongside the settlers who occupied their lands. Today, they are survived by traditional clans of the Iwaidja-speaking people who jointly manage Garig Gunak Barlu National Park, which protects the ruins and much more.

To call this destination remote would be a vast understatement. Its location, a rugged seven-hour drive east of Darwin, guarantees that only the truly determined discover its magnificence. Moreover, visitor numbers are limited to 20 vehicles at a time to preserve both the pristine coastal landscapes and its serenity.

The national park is enormous — over 4500 square kilometres — but the vast majority of it is either off limits to visitors or inaccessible without your own boat. If you have the chance, tow a boat here, or join an indulgent, fully guided tour to really see Garig Gunak Barlu at its best.

Remote and pristine, it’s worth the effort to find yourself this far away

Mud crab it ain’t, but we give the long bums a try anyway

Living remote and loving it, Robbie and Dani Risk are raising a family in their kind of paradise

The Victoria Settlement crumbles atop lofty limestone cliffs

To call this destination remote would be a vast understatement. Its location, a rugged seven-hour drive east of Darwin, guarantees that only the truly determined discover its magnificence.

Reaching Victoria ruins We arrive under our own steam after a four-day sail from Darwin, and push a further 14 nautical miles deep into Port Essington’s gaping blue cove. There’s no one else on the water and the Victoria Settlement ruins are deserted too, bar the enormous buffalo we spook grazing in the grasslands which takes off at a sprint, grunting and snorting.

Our easy circuit trail loops lazily past the chiselled stone of Victoria’s tiny homes, hospital, stores and kilns, and we spot middens from the traditional Madjunbalmi people too. The walking distance is small — just 3.7km — but we manage to spend three hours poking about, unearthing porcelain and glass fragments, and reading tragic cemetery headstones before returning to watch the sun set over towering limestone cliffs at Adam Head.

Here, an old tamarind tree flourishes by the beach, left by Macassan traders from Indonesian Sulawesi who arrived a hundred years before the British. They came to harvest sea cucumbers and left behind the wild cattle known as banteng that now overwhelm the national park.