Daytripping to Dreamtime

A continuum of peaceful beauty spans the skies of the two huge unfilled spaces of Australia’s Northern Territory; the dusty expanse of the continent, and the ocean stretching from the beaches to the horizon, scattered with islands that I felt the urge to explore alongside more obvious NT sites like Uluru.

However as our charter Cessna buzzed us over the sea and forests to the Tiwi Islands for a day trip, I felt an unease prejudiced by the sensationalism casting such Indigenous communities as tarnished by problems. Disembarking the plane I was nagged by the perennial questions of the vexed traveller: What am I doing here? What do they really think of us?

To quiet my trepidations it only took the warmth of our guides Ron and Philip, and my astonishment at their idyllic town: its canopy of overflowing trees, the houses leisurely paced out along dirt roads and the stark white weatherboards of the church against the blue spread of the sky. Ron gave us earnest explanations of Tiwi culture scattered with easy-going humour.

“How do you carve the burial spears?”
“With an angle grinder” he chuckled.

They showed us to a shed hosting a collective of artists, unfazed by visitors, painting carefully under a cathedral roof tattooed with neat figures in earth-toned ochres and bold white lines. The energy in the abstract patterns, Philip explained, points towards sacred sites and the changes of the tropical seasons.

Unhesitant to share family bonds, Ron discovered that a Tiwi man my partner had taught in Victoria was his brother-in-law and fetched him for a reunion, while Philip brought out his newborn twin sons and spoke of one day taking them turtle hunting. Our guides and their families then performed for us a ceremony, mimicking their totem animals with dances and cleansing us with smoke. Afterwards as Ron’s wife gifted me a clamshell painted red and yellow with a depiction of Tiwi rites I was overwhelmed with a gentleness I was sorry to have not expected.

In Australia we’re often told what the mesmerising landscapes meant to indigenous cultures, which often just emphasises their absence. On the plane home however, the beaches and trees we soared over weren't just postcard-beautiful but seemed meaningful and explained within the traditions that had been shared with us so generously. While there’s no doubt the Tiwi grapple with issues that elude visitors, I saw a part of life there that left me with a yearning that I couldn't have returned their kindness enough.