Bush Tucker Man (1987–1990): Season 2, Episode 4 - Top End - full transcript
You may not believe this,
but these things here,
which are called trepang or sea slug
or bêche-de-mer, call it what you like,
formed the basis of Australia's
very first export industry.
And it all happened about 100 years
before Captain Cook
even found the place.
What used to happen
was the Macassan traders would
come over from the Celebes,
or we call it Indonesia today,
get these things, collect them up,
hook them up, dry them out
and then take them back.
And they'd eventually
trade them through to China
where they were sort of regarded
as a bit of an exotic food.
I've heard somewhere that they were
regarded as an aphrodisiac, I think.
I was gonna say something about that,
but I think I'd better not.
In the north-west corner of Arnhem
Land is the Cobourg Peninsula.
And it's one of the most remote places
in Australia.
Geographically, the Peninsula is close
to the ancient trade route
between Indonesia and China.
And because of that, in 1838,
the British decided
to establish a garrison here,
to defend and manage the north.
They're cockleshells.
These things here I reckon just about
typify the history of this part of the world.
They'd start off down in the ocean.
You can pick them up and boil them up
and eat them. They're a bush tucker.
The Aboriginal people
dumped them all around here.
That's why we've got this midden here.
Well, you might have thought
that that'd be the end of it but it's not.
Because years and years later,
the British arrived
and they found a use for them,
as well as bits of coral like this.
Tucked away behind the woodland forest
of Port Essington
are the remains
of the British garrison.
With very little knowledge
of tropical Australia
the settlers were poorly prepared.
They were equipped only
with their traditional skills
which they'd learnt way back in England.
All those cockleshells down on the
beach and from the Aboriginal middens
were all dragged up here
and heated up in this thing here.
And because...this is a lime kiln.
They had to build this to get the cement
that they needed
to build the buildings
up in the settlement there.
These round Cornish chimneys
are all that's left
of the original married quarters.
The walls and the gardens
have all disappeared.
And that's because of the cyclones
and of course the white ants.
That lime and that cement
was what they required up here
to put the bricks together like this
and the stonework.
You gotta ask yourself the question -
up here in northern Australia,
do you really need a fireplace
in the middle of your living room?
And that I think typifies some of the
errors that the British made around here.
I reckon you need them
like a hole in the head myself.
Amongst the scattered remains
is the most important building
in the whole place - the hospital.
Everyone, at some time or other,
spent time here as a patient.
Their biggest mistake of the whole lot
was basically selecting this country
around here
as a site for Victoria Settlement.
The poor old Poms, they had it wrong
right from the word go.
Right from the very beginning.
Because they did a survey here
and they looked around this country
and they found that
there was tons of water.
The trouble was it was
the middle of the wet season.
They come back a couple of months
later, all dried out, nothing left.
And that's exactly what happened -
no water.
These stones are all that's left
of the hospital wards.
The lack of water and a poor diet meant
that they got a whole bunch of diseases,
things like dysentery and malaria
and of course the dreaded scurvy.
After 11 years of extreme hardship
56 men, women
and children were dead.
The survivors were recalled
and the place was abandoned.
Well, there's no doubt about it,
the turkeys have taken over
the quartermaster's store.
This building here used to be,
way back in Victoria Settlement's day,
the main quartermaster distributing area
for the whole of the settlement.
So they got all their rations out of here.
Well, they ran pretty short at times,
but since then the scrub turkeys
have moved in.
You can see round here all the holes
where they've been digging down
because if you were
to dig down into there,
you'd find a whole bunch of eggs
that you can cook up and eat.
Turkeys build mounds like this
generation after generation.
That's why it's so big here.
It's been going on for years, I reckon.
Holes all over the place.
Just across the bay from Victoria
Settlement is Record Point,
where the British ships used to anchor.
The flat, sandy coastline
is lined with casuarinas,
which was really quite significant
for their survival.
So often it is when you get
sand dunes like this
and casuarina trees like these ones here
growing together round the same area,
if you dig down, you can find yourself
a whole bunch of fresh water.
And this well here, this has been here
for a couple of hundred years.
Obviously back in those days
when the British used it,
it was a lot bigger and deeper
than it is at the moment.
Because it's all caved in.
They used to come here,
get their fresh water
and cart it about three mile across
the ocean there to Victoria Settlement.
Occasionally you might dig down
like this and not get any fresh water.
When that happens,
there's a little trick you can do.
These casuarina trees, or she-oaks
as a lot of people call them,
they grow all around the coastline
up the north here.
And they produce these little apples
here. They call them oak apples.
Well, if you're getting a bit dry,
a bit thirsty,
you can get one of these things here,
just cut it up a little bit,
get the rough stuff off the outside.
Smooth it up a bit.
Make it look a bit flash.
There we go.
Give it a bit of a chew, bit of a suck.
It's very, very acidic and dry.
And what it does
is it activates your saliva glands.
And suddenly, instead
of having a dry throat,
it's all wet again.
Just a little bit of a trick.
Of course, if you've got
a dry throat too long,
you end up having a voice
like the gravel truck.
You wouldn't want one of them,
would you?
Livestock left behind,
after several attempts
to colonise the north,
included deer
and these banteng cattle,
which were originally
brought over from Indonesia.
These days, they still roam round
the place in small numbers
right throughout the Cobourg area.
These old tamarind trees
don't really belong here in Australia.
They were brought here
by the Macassans.
But these days, they've been
pretty well naturalised.
They're all around the place.
You find them all around
the coastline everywhere.
Just trying to get some...
Ah. Here we go.
That's the fruit. Seeds.
And you can eat them.
That's why the Macassans
brought them out in the first place
because they're a food item
they brought down from Indonesia.
Just crack him open there.
It's that pulp inside
that you can eat.
It's got a very sweet
and sour sort of taste to it.
They're not bad tucker.
That seed will probably germinate
one day and grow up to a tree like this.
I had to climb the tree to find it
because down below,
there's none hanging down there at all.
That's probably because
of the banteng cattle
that were released
from Victoria Settlement.
The Macassans always planted
these trees near water.
And from way out at sea,
they could see the green foliage
and they'd steer into
one of their old campsites
year after year,
generation after generation.
That's how long
they were coming here for.
One of the major health problems
they had over there
at Victoria Settlement was scurvy.
And that was because of the diet
they had there. Food was pretty crook.
Eventually the penny dropped
with the Brits.
I mean, seven or eight years
down the track,
and they woke up to the fact that
they could trade with the Aboriginals.
And the Aboriginals
actually had a cure for that.
It's this thing over here.
It's called a kingia palm.
And the British eventually started
trading goods with the Aboriginals
who brought in the palm heart.
The palm heart is contained
in this area here.
Right up the centre.
Botanists call it the terminal bud.
But right in the middle there,
we get a long, thin cabbage
which you can break up and eat raw.
Well, the only drawback with that is
that when you do that, you kill the tree.
So we're not gonna be doing that.
We'll let it grow up nice and tall
like all these other ones.
You know, one of the really great things
about the Top End country up here
is the fishing.
I'm not just talking
about barramundi either.
You can get all sorts
of things out there.
Mangrove jack and trevally
and queen fish and salmon, all sorts.
These lures work pretty well on most
of them too, particularly barramundi.
Lots of people have got
lots of different theories
on what lure works best and what time
of the day, et cetera, et cetera.
But as far as I'm concerned,
I reckon barramundi lures
are designed to catch fishermen just as
much as they're designed to catch barra.
I'm just trying to think
just how long it's been
since I've seen
so many of these mud whelks
round the place.
There's literally hundreds
and hundreds of them here
and you don't get to see them
like that too often.
What happens is that
the tide runs out,
and at low tide like this,
they get stranded on the creek lines
and the mud banks and things like that.
And you can just pick them up,
take them back, put them on hot coals
or boil them up
and they're terrific.
Aboriginal people up in the Top End
here, they've got a name for them.
They call them long bums.
The scientific name is
telescopeum telescopium.
And that's because
of the shape of them.
Might take a few back later on.
You know, barra fishing
up here in the Top End
is one of the best
recreational sports you can get,
when you can get them.
It's a real case though of being
in the right place at the right time.
So far this afternoon,
I haven't managed to do that.
Just as well I've got those long bums
sitting back there.
Never mind. One day.
Gotcha.
It just goes to show with barra,
never give up.
Barra can be
a pretty good fighting fish,
but sometimes they can be
a little bit tricky.
They'll leave the fight
right to the very last,
just when you're about to land them.
It's one of the things you've got
to be careful about with barra
because what they can do is flip
and they've got a little gill system,
which I'll show you here.
Which is serrated.
And that's what cuts your line.
Which is what that fellow did
just there on the water's edge.
And that's it there.
It's very, very sharp in there.
Cut your finger
and everything there.
You're well and truly hooked.
But what he's done is tangle
the line round there and cut it.
Bit lucky to get him aboard, I reckon.
Interesting thing about barras.
When they're about that size there,
they're all males.
Later on, a few years down the track,
they get a bit bigger,
they change over
and turn into females.
Funny sort of arrangement.
Never mind.
Mostly, the Arnhem Land coastline
is all mangrove country.
But occasionally, here to the east
of Cobourg, there are a few surprises.
The main vehicle track, however,
is much further inland,
down to the south towards
the stone country near Arunbilli.
It's interesting to see
how this countryside changes
as you move through
the top part of Arnhem Land here.
All this stone country
is gonna give way very shortly
and later on we get
the big open woodland country.
Lots and lots of it.
But 10, 20 years ago, you wouldn't
have been able to drive through here
because all these roads have only
been put in the last decade or so.
Some of them are OK, but others
are not real bright, I can tell you,
particularly during the wet season.
Hang on. I won't be going anywhere
unless I put some fuel in this thing.
That's the trouble with diesels.
If you run out of fuel,
it takes you half an hour to pump it
back up again into the engine.
Mind you, diesel has got
a few points going for it.
For a start, you've got no electrics
in a diesel engine.
And what that means is that
during the wet season time
when there's lots of water
lying round the place,
you have no electrical problems.
The other thing you get is long legs.
Plenty of range.
I reckon with those jerry cans
in that trailer there,
I can get round about 1,000 k
out of them,
which is pretty good.
Take me everywhere I want to go.
Just have a look at that over there.
That's what you call
a magnetic anthill.
There you go. Spot on.
Due north and south.
There's a whole bunch of theories
as to exactly why they build
these things like this.
But I guess the most commonly
accepted one
is the fact that by doing it this way,
they get sunlight on the broad side
in the morning
when the sun rises from the east
and in the afternoon
over on the western side.
Well, if that's north up there,
that's where I'm headed.
Up to Maningrida.
This is Maningrida,
an Aboriginal community,
and the people here
have asked me to drop in
and have a bit of a talk
at the local school.
Should I talk about bush tucker?
Yes!
Alright.
How about you tell me what bush tucker
you've got growing here?
Over the years,
I've learned a lot about bush tucker
from Aboriginal people
and sometimes I get the chance
to contribute something back,
particularly to the kids.
What else...what else have we got here?
Got the yams, got the goanna.
Kangaroo.
Kangaroo.
Buffalo.
No, not buffalo.
File snake!
File snake.
Why is he called file snake?
Something like a file on his back.
He's got very rough skin with...
the scales are just like a file.
Where would you find that file snake?
In a billabong.
Billabong? Swamp country?
Down in that swamp country?
Yes.
I might have a look for that file snake.
What do you reckon?
There's no shortage of volunteers.
This is gonna be interesting.
Where are you looking, buddy?
Round here?
Ah, look at that, look at that.
All we're doing here
is chasing that file snake
because this is really the home of file
snake round the Arafura swamp area.
We're getting quite a few
out of this one tiny little patch.
And you find them just by putting your
hands down underneath the grass here.
There's quite a few here.
They're obviously very popular.
That is... Eh? You got it? Here.
There.
Look at that. Hey?
There you go, Michael,
you can have that.
Alright.
It's a feed and a half, that one.
Although these snakes are pretty big,
they are in fact extremely docile
and timid.
And I've never yet heard of anyone
being bitten by one.
Might be all gone.
You've got that one there, Molly?
Pull him up.
Pull him up.
When I get the luxury of time, I put up
a long wire antenna like that one there
because that long wire will give me
a lot better reception
than the whip antenna will.
Radio out here
is particularly important
from a safety point of view
as well as communication.
But if you're operating in these areas
by yourself, it can be your lifeline.
VJY Darwin, VJY Darwin. This is
Three Quebec Whiskey Papa. Over.
Good morning, Les.
Go ahead. Over.
Good morning, VJY. Could I have
a GO telephone number, please?
I'd like GO 872445.
I'll say it again - GO 872445. Over.
Roger. Copy that. Stand by. Over.
Standing by.
VJY is the outpost radio system
out of Darwin up here.
And all the people that live round
the bush who haven't got a telephone
work off one of these
HF radio sets like this.
It's their only means
of communicating round the place.
Hang on a minute.
G'day. Could I talk to Jim,
please? Over.
Speaking.
Uh, Jim, it's Les Hiddins here, mate.
I'm calling you
from about 40 k outside of Gove.
I wonder if you know anything
about that track
between Lake Evella
and Numbawarra, over?
Yeah, Roger, Les. I was up there
a couple of weeks ago, mate, over.
Oh, right. How did you find it? Over.
Yeah, no problem, mate.
A couple of bushfires...
Whether it be road conditions or
medical help or just for a bit of a chat,
I reckon things would be a bit hard
without a radio.
It's something we've all come to rely on.
Way back in the days
when the British were over there
at Port Victoria Settlement,
they used to send a letter off to England
that might take 12 months to get there,
take another 12 months
for the letter to come back, the reply.
Well, I guess a lot of people imagine that
Arnhem Land is still isolated and remote,
and to a certain extent, that's true.
But these days, what with motor cars
and HF radios
and aeroplanes and boats
and roads and things,
things are not quite as isolated
as you might imagine.
but these things here,
which are called trepang or sea slug
or bêche-de-mer, call it what you like,
formed the basis of Australia's
very first export industry.
And it all happened about 100 years
before Captain Cook
even found the place.
What used to happen
was the Macassan traders would
come over from the Celebes,
or we call it Indonesia today,
get these things, collect them up,
hook them up, dry them out
and then take them back.
And they'd eventually
trade them through to China
where they were sort of regarded
as a bit of an exotic food.
I've heard somewhere that they were
regarded as an aphrodisiac, I think.
I was gonna say something about that,
but I think I'd better not.
In the north-west corner of Arnhem
Land is the Cobourg Peninsula.
And it's one of the most remote places
in Australia.
Geographically, the Peninsula is close
to the ancient trade route
between Indonesia and China.
And because of that, in 1838,
the British decided
to establish a garrison here,
to defend and manage the north.
They're cockleshells.
These things here I reckon just about
typify the history of this part of the world.
They'd start off down in the ocean.
You can pick them up and boil them up
and eat them. They're a bush tucker.
The Aboriginal people
dumped them all around here.
That's why we've got this midden here.
Well, you might have thought
that that'd be the end of it but it's not.
Because years and years later,
the British arrived
and they found a use for them,
as well as bits of coral like this.
Tucked away behind the woodland forest
of Port Essington
are the remains
of the British garrison.
With very little knowledge
of tropical Australia
the settlers were poorly prepared.
They were equipped only
with their traditional skills
which they'd learnt way back in England.
All those cockleshells down on the
beach and from the Aboriginal middens
were all dragged up here
and heated up in this thing here.
And because...this is a lime kiln.
They had to build this to get the cement
that they needed
to build the buildings
up in the settlement there.
These round Cornish chimneys
are all that's left
of the original married quarters.
The walls and the gardens
have all disappeared.
And that's because of the cyclones
and of course the white ants.
That lime and that cement
was what they required up here
to put the bricks together like this
and the stonework.
You gotta ask yourself the question -
up here in northern Australia,
do you really need a fireplace
in the middle of your living room?
And that I think typifies some of the
errors that the British made around here.
I reckon you need them
like a hole in the head myself.
Amongst the scattered remains
is the most important building
in the whole place - the hospital.
Everyone, at some time or other,
spent time here as a patient.
Their biggest mistake of the whole lot
was basically selecting this country
around here
as a site for Victoria Settlement.
The poor old Poms, they had it wrong
right from the word go.
Right from the very beginning.
Because they did a survey here
and they looked around this country
and they found that
there was tons of water.
The trouble was it was
the middle of the wet season.
They come back a couple of months
later, all dried out, nothing left.
And that's exactly what happened -
no water.
These stones are all that's left
of the hospital wards.
The lack of water and a poor diet meant
that they got a whole bunch of diseases,
things like dysentery and malaria
and of course the dreaded scurvy.
After 11 years of extreme hardship
56 men, women
and children were dead.
The survivors were recalled
and the place was abandoned.
Well, there's no doubt about it,
the turkeys have taken over
the quartermaster's store.
This building here used to be,
way back in Victoria Settlement's day,
the main quartermaster distributing area
for the whole of the settlement.
So they got all their rations out of here.
Well, they ran pretty short at times,
but since then the scrub turkeys
have moved in.
You can see round here all the holes
where they've been digging down
because if you were
to dig down into there,
you'd find a whole bunch of eggs
that you can cook up and eat.
Turkeys build mounds like this
generation after generation.
That's why it's so big here.
It's been going on for years, I reckon.
Holes all over the place.
Just across the bay from Victoria
Settlement is Record Point,
where the British ships used to anchor.
The flat, sandy coastline
is lined with casuarinas,
which was really quite significant
for their survival.
So often it is when you get
sand dunes like this
and casuarina trees like these ones here
growing together round the same area,
if you dig down, you can find yourself
a whole bunch of fresh water.
And this well here, this has been here
for a couple of hundred years.
Obviously back in those days
when the British used it,
it was a lot bigger and deeper
than it is at the moment.
Because it's all caved in.
They used to come here,
get their fresh water
and cart it about three mile across
the ocean there to Victoria Settlement.
Occasionally you might dig down
like this and not get any fresh water.
When that happens,
there's a little trick you can do.
These casuarina trees, or she-oaks
as a lot of people call them,
they grow all around the coastline
up the north here.
And they produce these little apples
here. They call them oak apples.
Well, if you're getting a bit dry,
a bit thirsty,
you can get one of these things here,
just cut it up a little bit,
get the rough stuff off the outside.
Smooth it up a bit.
Make it look a bit flash.
There we go.
Give it a bit of a chew, bit of a suck.
It's very, very acidic and dry.
And what it does
is it activates your saliva glands.
And suddenly, instead
of having a dry throat,
it's all wet again.
Just a little bit of a trick.
Of course, if you've got
a dry throat too long,
you end up having a voice
like the gravel truck.
You wouldn't want one of them,
would you?
Livestock left behind,
after several attempts
to colonise the north,
included deer
and these banteng cattle,
which were originally
brought over from Indonesia.
These days, they still roam round
the place in small numbers
right throughout the Cobourg area.
These old tamarind trees
don't really belong here in Australia.
They were brought here
by the Macassans.
But these days, they've been
pretty well naturalised.
They're all around the place.
You find them all around
the coastline everywhere.
Just trying to get some...
Ah. Here we go.
That's the fruit. Seeds.
And you can eat them.
That's why the Macassans
brought them out in the first place
because they're a food item
they brought down from Indonesia.
Just crack him open there.
It's that pulp inside
that you can eat.
It's got a very sweet
and sour sort of taste to it.
They're not bad tucker.
That seed will probably germinate
one day and grow up to a tree like this.
I had to climb the tree to find it
because down below,
there's none hanging down there at all.
That's probably because
of the banteng cattle
that were released
from Victoria Settlement.
The Macassans always planted
these trees near water.
And from way out at sea,
they could see the green foliage
and they'd steer into
one of their old campsites
year after year,
generation after generation.
That's how long
they were coming here for.
One of the major health problems
they had over there
at Victoria Settlement was scurvy.
And that was because of the diet
they had there. Food was pretty crook.
Eventually the penny dropped
with the Brits.
I mean, seven or eight years
down the track,
and they woke up to the fact that
they could trade with the Aboriginals.
And the Aboriginals
actually had a cure for that.
It's this thing over here.
It's called a kingia palm.
And the British eventually started
trading goods with the Aboriginals
who brought in the palm heart.
The palm heart is contained
in this area here.
Right up the centre.
Botanists call it the terminal bud.
But right in the middle there,
we get a long, thin cabbage
which you can break up and eat raw.
Well, the only drawback with that is
that when you do that, you kill the tree.
So we're not gonna be doing that.
We'll let it grow up nice and tall
like all these other ones.
You know, one of the really great things
about the Top End country up here
is the fishing.
I'm not just talking
about barramundi either.
You can get all sorts
of things out there.
Mangrove jack and trevally
and queen fish and salmon, all sorts.
These lures work pretty well on most
of them too, particularly barramundi.
Lots of people have got
lots of different theories
on what lure works best and what time
of the day, et cetera, et cetera.
But as far as I'm concerned,
I reckon barramundi lures
are designed to catch fishermen just as
much as they're designed to catch barra.
I'm just trying to think
just how long it's been
since I've seen
so many of these mud whelks
round the place.
There's literally hundreds
and hundreds of them here
and you don't get to see them
like that too often.
What happens is that
the tide runs out,
and at low tide like this,
they get stranded on the creek lines
and the mud banks and things like that.
And you can just pick them up,
take them back, put them on hot coals
or boil them up
and they're terrific.
Aboriginal people up in the Top End
here, they've got a name for them.
They call them long bums.
The scientific name is
telescopeum telescopium.
And that's because
of the shape of them.
Might take a few back later on.
You know, barra fishing
up here in the Top End
is one of the best
recreational sports you can get,
when you can get them.
It's a real case though of being
in the right place at the right time.
So far this afternoon,
I haven't managed to do that.
Just as well I've got those long bums
sitting back there.
Never mind. One day.
Gotcha.
It just goes to show with barra,
never give up.
Barra can be
a pretty good fighting fish,
but sometimes they can be
a little bit tricky.
They'll leave the fight
right to the very last,
just when you're about to land them.
It's one of the things you've got
to be careful about with barra
because what they can do is flip
and they've got a little gill system,
which I'll show you here.
Which is serrated.
And that's what cuts your line.
Which is what that fellow did
just there on the water's edge.
And that's it there.
It's very, very sharp in there.
Cut your finger
and everything there.
You're well and truly hooked.
But what he's done is tangle
the line round there and cut it.
Bit lucky to get him aboard, I reckon.
Interesting thing about barras.
When they're about that size there,
they're all males.
Later on, a few years down the track,
they get a bit bigger,
they change over
and turn into females.
Funny sort of arrangement.
Never mind.
Mostly, the Arnhem Land coastline
is all mangrove country.
But occasionally, here to the east
of Cobourg, there are a few surprises.
The main vehicle track, however,
is much further inland,
down to the south towards
the stone country near Arunbilli.
It's interesting to see
how this countryside changes
as you move through
the top part of Arnhem Land here.
All this stone country
is gonna give way very shortly
and later on we get
the big open woodland country.
Lots and lots of it.
But 10, 20 years ago, you wouldn't
have been able to drive through here
because all these roads have only
been put in the last decade or so.
Some of them are OK, but others
are not real bright, I can tell you,
particularly during the wet season.
Hang on. I won't be going anywhere
unless I put some fuel in this thing.
That's the trouble with diesels.
If you run out of fuel,
it takes you half an hour to pump it
back up again into the engine.
Mind you, diesel has got
a few points going for it.
For a start, you've got no electrics
in a diesel engine.
And what that means is that
during the wet season time
when there's lots of water
lying round the place,
you have no electrical problems.
The other thing you get is long legs.
Plenty of range.
I reckon with those jerry cans
in that trailer there,
I can get round about 1,000 k
out of them,
which is pretty good.
Take me everywhere I want to go.
Just have a look at that over there.
That's what you call
a magnetic anthill.
There you go. Spot on.
Due north and south.
There's a whole bunch of theories
as to exactly why they build
these things like this.
But I guess the most commonly
accepted one
is the fact that by doing it this way,
they get sunlight on the broad side
in the morning
when the sun rises from the east
and in the afternoon
over on the western side.
Well, if that's north up there,
that's where I'm headed.
Up to Maningrida.
This is Maningrida,
an Aboriginal community,
and the people here
have asked me to drop in
and have a bit of a talk
at the local school.
Should I talk about bush tucker?
Yes!
Alright.
How about you tell me what bush tucker
you've got growing here?
Over the years,
I've learned a lot about bush tucker
from Aboriginal people
and sometimes I get the chance
to contribute something back,
particularly to the kids.
What else...what else have we got here?
Got the yams, got the goanna.
Kangaroo.
Kangaroo.
Buffalo.
No, not buffalo.
File snake!
File snake.
Why is he called file snake?
Something like a file on his back.
He's got very rough skin with...
the scales are just like a file.
Where would you find that file snake?
In a billabong.
Billabong? Swamp country?
Down in that swamp country?
Yes.
I might have a look for that file snake.
What do you reckon?
There's no shortage of volunteers.
This is gonna be interesting.
Where are you looking, buddy?
Round here?
Ah, look at that, look at that.
All we're doing here
is chasing that file snake
because this is really the home of file
snake round the Arafura swamp area.
We're getting quite a few
out of this one tiny little patch.
And you find them just by putting your
hands down underneath the grass here.
There's quite a few here.
They're obviously very popular.
That is... Eh? You got it? Here.
There.
Look at that. Hey?
There you go, Michael,
you can have that.
Alright.
It's a feed and a half, that one.
Although these snakes are pretty big,
they are in fact extremely docile
and timid.
And I've never yet heard of anyone
being bitten by one.
Might be all gone.
You've got that one there, Molly?
Pull him up.
Pull him up.
When I get the luxury of time, I put up
a long wire antenna like that one there
because that long wire will give me
a lot better reception
than the whip antenna will.
Radio out here
is particularly important
from a safety point of view
as well as communication.
But if you're operating in these areas
by yourself, it can be your lifeline.
VJY Darwin, VJY Darwin. This is
Three Quebec Whiskey Papa. Over.
Good morning, Les.
Go ahead. Over.
Good morning, VJY. Could I have
a GO telephone number, please?
I'd like GO 872445.
I'll say it again - GO 872445. Over.
Roger. Copy that. Stand by. Over.
Standing by.
VJY is the outpost radio system
out of Darwin up here.
And all the people that live round
the bush who haven't got a telephone
work off one of these
HF radio sets like this.
It's their only means
of communicating round the place.
Hang on a minute.
G'day. Could I talk to Jim,
please? Over.
Speaking.
Uh, Jim, it's Les Hiddins here, mate.
I'm calling you
from about 40 k outside of Gove.
I wonder if you know anything
about that track
between Lake Evella
and Numbawarra, over?
Yeah, Roger, Les. I was up there
a couple of weeks ago, mate, over.
Oh, right. How did you find it? Over.
Yeah, no problem, mate.
A couple of bushfires...
Whether it be road conditions or
medical help or just for a bit of a chat,
I reckon things would be a bit hard
without a radio.
It's something we've all come to rely on.
Way back in the days
when the British were over there
at Port Victoria Settlement,
they used to send a letter off to England
that might take 12 months to get there,
take another 12 months
for the letter to come back, the reply.
Well, I guess a lot of people imagine that
Arnhem Land is still isolated and remote,
and to a certain extent, that's true.
But these days, what with motor cars
and HF radios
and aeroplanes and boats
and roads and things,
things are not quite as isolated
as you might imagine.