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.