"Catherine, get back. I won't be grabbing you if you fall
in."
With these words Jenny Hunter leaves her six-year-old daughter to
play on the edge of a croc-infested billabong.
The travellers on her bush tucker tour look warily at the green
water, so inviting on a hot day in Kakadu, except for the danger
that may lurk beneath.
"You can smell them straight away. It's a very strong odour of
rotting fish. You smell that, you get out of the water," says
Jenny.
"I used to go out with my mother. She'd slap the water with her
hand, but today I won't stick my big toe in it."
Now she grabs the branch of a green plum tree, yanking a tiny green
ant from the foliage. Licking its bum, she turns to the
group.
"Tastes just like lemon," she says.
"Good for tea, colds and blocked noses. Crush it up with these
leaves and wrap it together: I call it Vicks on a stick."
The more adventurous of her followers bite off the sac altogether.
It pops like a citrus caviar bomb in the mouth.
This is hands-on, in-your-face indigenous eco-tourism - and it's
being hailed as instrumental to the process of
reconciliation.
"In order for us to have a dialogue we need to understand where we
are coming from, so we can work together," says Charles Darwin
University Vice-Chancellor Steve Larkin.
After not having "much direct access" to Aboriginal culture in the
past, "people are now saying we want to know more, we want our
children to know more and they are thinking about what sort of
society they want Australia to be", the indigenous academic
says.
According to Galaxy research released by Tourism NT, more than 80%
of Australians feel they knew little or nothing about Aboriginal
culture.
But about the same proportion think it's essential for
reconciliation, while 94% of parents of school-aged children want
them to have an understanding of indigenous people and their
history.
Jenny and her husband Andy Ralph run one of the 103 indigenous
tourism products available in the NT.
Kakadu Culture Camp is found on the edge of Djarradjin Billabong in
the centre of the world heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.
Nailed to eucalyptus trees, the bleached white skulls of buffaloes
- eradicated from the park in the late 1980s - mark out the
communal areas of the camp site.
Private tents are scattered on the outer rim with comfortable beds
and electric lights. It's the real bush experience - minus the
hassle.
What started as the only night cruise in the region three years ago
has grown into a comprehensive tent-tucker-culture package, which
includes spear throwing, basket weaving, wildlife spotting and
playing the didgeridoo.
"Air in your cheeks, vibration on your lips," Andy advises the
struggling musicians of the group.
"Only put half of your mouth on. I hang to the left and I play to
the right, if you get what I mean."
Andy came to Kakadu for two days in 1988. "I ran out of money and
had to get a job so here I am, still out of money and still needing
to get a job."
Brash, brazen and beer-swilling, Andy is a stereotypical Aussie
larrikin.
But the man who married a local Bolmo woman, after being adopted
by her clan and given a skin name, has a deep respect for
Aboriginal culture and a keen desire to share it.
"We pray for the day when a 50-year-old male will come in and say,
yes, we want to do a cultural tour. It's normally their wives
dragging them along while they are having a smoke in the carpark,"
he says.
"We are yet to see the evidence that Middle Australia will
come."
Andy says this may have a lot to do with preconceptions about
Aborigines.
"The problem is that in the towns the black fellas are visibly
running amok. That makes them naturally nervous.
"By the time they get here they expect to see Doug (Jenny's uncle)
holding a VB while playing the didgeridoo, but most Aboriginal
people of this area don't drink."
Backpackers, however, have been beating down his door, with 5,000
Germans completing at least one of his many tours during the last
dry season.
"It's good talking to people, talking about our land," says Victor,
a local indigenous guide and entrepreneur working a few hours'
drive from the camp.
"To get a lot of people to understand about indigenous culture,
it's sharing our knowledge and history and that's important."
Having started as ranger in Kakadu soon after the national park
opened in 1979, he later worked in Canberra on fire management
strategies but returned to his country a few years ago and now runs
his own business.
Victor normally leads tours two to three days a week, mostly
catering to Japanese and Dutch visitors, but he hopes to see more
Australian families.
One of the routes he takes is a trek up Ubirr Rock, which Paul
Hogan made famous in the film Crocodile Dundee.
The terrain is stunning, but the real magic is in the rock art
along the route.
"They paint good tucker, fish, goanna, turtle," Victor says of the
art which dates back 40,000 years.
"The men in the camp told a lot of stories, and they draw a lot of
it onto the rock here."
One depicts the tale of the Namarrgarn sisters.
One sister would frighten the other children by turning herself
into a crocodile, and when she was unable to turn back, her loyal
sister joined her in the billabong.
"That's the story we tell the kids - you've got to be careful of
the sisters because they are looking for you in the water. It is a
story that has been told here by these people about how the
crocodile came to be," says Victor.
He points out grinding holes on the rock floor, used for crushing
seeds for damper and mixing ochres with animal fats to make
paint.
Paintings on the route, Victor assures the group, commemorate some
of the earliest sightings of white people in Kakadu.
"You wouldn't see no black fella with his hands in his pockets," he
says.
"They painted what was different and new to them, something strange
like seeing a white fella."
He tells how mimi spirits - willowy creatures who hide in rock
cracks - left a drawing on a sandstone overhang five metres above
the ground.
"They are very clever things.. They can take the rock face off and
draw on it and then put it back on."
NT Tourism Minister Chris Burns says "local indigenous tourism
experiences" are the ideal avenue for learning more about the
culture.
"Here in the Northern Territory we have a rich cultural history,
and our tourism industry now includes over a hundred indigenous
tourism products, which makes learning about and experiencing our
indigenous culture more easily accessible," he said.
Back at the culture camp, Jenny has horrified the group by
explaining how Aboriginal women would bite the head off a file
snake before cooking it on coals.
"They're not poisonous, so the way we have got to kill them is to
put their neck in your mouth and bite down," she says.
"It breaks their neck quickly, so that's the way we do it. I won't
bite its head off - too scary - but when I go hunting with my
aunties they tell me to and I'll close my eyes."
We learn the Andjudmi tree - or "Un-do-me tree" as Catherine calls
it - is particularly sacred.
The leaves, which retain heat, are used to treat arthritis.
Jenny wrapped Catherine's legs in the leaves when she was a baby
to "make them strong".
"If we want any fruit from this tree, we have to wait until it
drops. We don't pick it...
"We always encourage the Aussies to come, and it's slowly getting
there," she says before turning to grab a green ant from the next
tree.
Displaying her father's knack for the verbal show stopper,
Catherine tells her mother's audience of another green ant
experience: "I remember when one pissed in my eye."
