Vast, mysterious Arnhem Land is among Australia's last great regions of untouched wilderness. The best way to look at this rugged, culturally intriguing region? A small-ship cruise.
It's dawn in Cape York, and also the sky explodes over the sea in a fiery display of pink, red and tangerine.
We're here to determine within the sunrise in the northernmost reason for the Australian continent – a rocky platform jutting out into Torres Strait and dotted with large piles of rocks that visitors have put in through the years.
We arrive on the fourth day of a 12-day cruise aboard Coral Discoverer, a 36-room luxury expedition ship sailing from Cairns to Darwin via Cape York and Arnhem Land. The ocean is glassy, the sky a cloudless blue and also the sun bathes us in warming rays.
It's perfect cruising weather – a stark contrast to the start of voyage.
Cyclone Nora is forecast striking the coastline from Cape York to Cairns, bringing gale-force winds, rain and high seas.
We've barely left Cairns whenever a planned trip to Cooktown is cancelled. Instead, we'll head right to Lizard Island – the second day's the standard itinerary – where Captain Nathan Clark says the wind is gusting at 25 knots.
The next morning dawns grey and cloudy nevertheless the worst in the storm has transpired.
After a hearty breakfast, we motor to Lizard Island in the Xplorer tender. The 1013-hectare national park has a sensitively-built, 40-room luxury resort, a study station, small airstrip along with a hill referred to as Cook's Look.
In 1770 James Cook climbed the 359-metre peak to obtain his bearings after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef. He named Lizard Island for its discussed among goannas – the first is sunning itself on the way that runs in the beach.
Plans for all of us to hike up Cook's Look are quashed. The steep walk is challenging within the best of times, and today the peak is hidden behind a thick wad of cottonwool cloud.
Instead, we stroll along a boardwalk within the mangroves, beyond the airstrip for the aptly named Blue Lagoon and Coconut Bay – a stretch of sandy beach and brilliant blue waters dotted with small fishing boats.
Gulls dive and swoop over the sea and the briny scent of salt fills environmental surroundings. Others brave the waters at Watsons Bay to snorkel, in which the visibility and fish sightings are wonderful.
The weather forces more tweaking in the itinerary. By Cape York, the situation is normal again and we're blessed with blue skies and glorious sunsets up to Darwin.
Days settle in to a steady rhythm of shore excursions and lectures interspersed with delicious gourmet meals which include a seafood buffet, an Australian barbecue and three-course a la carte dinners.
Sunset cocktails around the Sun Deck become a pre-dinner ritual. On expires in the Xplorer, we spot osprey and white-breasted sea eagles, sooty oystercatchers along with a feeding pod of snubfin dolphins.
Coral Expeditions, the Australian small-ship cruise operator, has built its reputation on 'tread lightly' tours where passengers can gain a deeper understanding of destinations from expert lecturers.
On this cruise, there are lively talks on marine biology as well as the Great Barrier Reef, indigenous plants, bush tucker and the war and pearling good reputation for Torres Strait and Arnhem Land.
We visit Flinders and Stanley Islands, area of the Flinders Group National Park, with Aboriginal elder and traditional owner Danny Gordon.
On Flinders, Gordon shows us where sailors from HMS Dart, on the hydrographic survey from the area in 1899, carved the ship's name and date around the packet at one end of the beach.
On Stanley Island, he leads us on an easy walk inland with a sheltered outcrop in which the ancient ochre rock art from the Yiithuwarra people depicts tall ships and animals for instance crocodiles, turtles, dugongs and stingrays.
We also visit Horn Island, just a little dot west of Cape York that within the second world war became the most attacked location in Australia aside from Darwin.
Thursday Island, or TI as the locals affectionately refer to it as, has Green Hill Fort, Australia's oldest military defences – a stroll towards the battlements delivers stunning views within the Torres Strait Islands.
Yirkkala is our first stop in Arnhem Land after a day spent crossing the Gulf of Carpentaria. The remote community 700 kilometres east of Darwin is bright with colour: bruised red earth, purple flowers, salt-green
sea and pastel houses. Children splash in regards to the shoreline. Today, Yirrkala is a well-liked stop with cruise passengers keen to purchase art, nevertheless the community is renowned for an additional reason:
The 1963 bark petitions that triggered the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were signed here, the historic moment immortalised by local legends Yothu Yindi inside their 1991 hit “Treaty”.
Yolngu people, faces and bodies smeared in white ochre and brandishing gum leaves, execute a rousing Thanks for visiting Country ceremony underneath the bright morning sun.
At the wonderful Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, room after room is full of local art within the 25 villages scattered across northeast Arnhem Land: delicate basket weavings and striped dilly bags, intricately painted burial poles, ochre bowls and wooden carvings of people and animals.
On Bathurst Island, we stop by on Tiwi Design, where bark art and silkscreen fabrics are notable for their native design and rehearse of bold ochre colours. There's a smoking ceremony as well as an entertaining clapstick performance of local songs and dances by our guides as well as their partners.
Kimberley-born Samantha Martin, author in the Bush Tukka Guide (Hardie Grant Travel), joins the ship in Yirrkala to speak about indigenous food.
Dressed in traditional costume and white ochre paint, she talks about hunting goanna and plucking barramundi in the sea together with her bare hands. We sample lemon aspen and bunya nuts, wild rosella and finger limes, and dip bread right into a dukka-like mix of alpine pepper and roasted wattle seeds.
Her talk proves illuminating whenever we walk into Garig Gunak Barlu National Park with head ranger Alan Withers and discover quinine plants and a nest of green ants. Withers points out the ‘long bums’, bright blue mud whelks lying in muddy banks beneath mangroves.
These would be best cooked tossed around the campfire or barbecue, he says. After i ask how to find yams, he laughs: “Why can you bother here? At low tide, you are able to pluck fish from the rock pools and oysters and dirt crabs in the mangroves.”
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