Monday 16 June 2025

We start this morning as we have started every other morning. Waiting. Not for Godot but for a plane. Vacate room by 7am, bags on deck at 7am so staff can clean room for incoming guests. However, rather than sitting in the Lodge for several hours, today our hosts here at Borrodaile, Davidson’s Arnhem Land Adventures, have a little side trip planned. A 4WD drive to a waterhole for a swim. One look at the waterhole and we don’t swim. Very pretty but what you don’t see in these excellent photos by Cherrie is the scum floating on top. Were we to swim we would exit the waterhole looking more like a loch ness monster than ever.

Return to the lodge through this extraordinary country

and embark on a long philosophical discussion with a very learned guide, Don, and our less than learned tour group, as to the outcome of the referendum, the term First Nations, colonisation, land rights etc. As you might expect, I stayed schtum. Not.

Fly Mt Borrodaile to Seven Spirit Bay.

And here it is, from the air

And we land

Here we are 200 kms north east of Darwin in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park.

The seven spirits I know, and indeed am quite closely related to some, are whiskey, gin, rum, vodka, brandy, sambuca and advocat.

However, this seven spirit bay is so called because of the seven seasons of the local indigenous calendar (rainy, monsoon, magpie goose egg, barramundi, heavy dew, big wind, build up) OR because of the seven Aboriginal tribes that once inhabited the region. Either way, it’s a luxurious wilderness retreat

We are welcomed by Fraulein Nell, who has ways unt means of telling us what to do and how to do it. But joyfully we are here for a luxurious three nights. Yay, we can unpack and do the laundry.

This afternoon we take a swim in the heavily pebblecreted billabong

Difficult to get into, delightfully refreshing in and an entire military operation to extract me. Hollywood style, it took four good men.

Sunset drinks on the deck, taken at 6.21pm, 6.42pm and 6.56pm

Nell is nowhere to be seen during dinner service and the staff seem quite relaxed. And so endeth our first day at Seven Spirit Bay