Lords Safari Arnhem Land Tour

I absolutely loved this tour and would recommend anyone that is up this way to do it. It was a full day tour, full of amazing scenery and interesting facts and something that I would definitely love to do again. Mike picked us up in his 4WD bus thing from the lodge and then we drove out to Cahill’s Crossing and crossed into Arnhem Land from there. The morning was spent climbing up Injalak hill with two aboriginal guides who explained the paintings and answered our questions, including some particularly dense ones from one of the ladies (there is always one in each group).

Some of the paintings they showed us were just amazing. Huge barramundi, rock pythons, fresh water turtle, wallaby and emu, painted in deep reds, yellow ochre and white cover every available surface. In some places the paintings have been layered on top of each other as generation after generation have recorded their lives.
We also got to see a burial site and had morning tea looking out over the billabong in the west and the rocky escarpment in the south while we sat underneath a rocky overhang that had aboriginal paintings on the underside whilst drinking our tea and eating our monte carlos. Talk about surreal.

On our way back we visited a sacred site where they performed circumcision ceremonies and had a little bit of an exploration along the back of the rocks. We also got to see a painting of a double rigged schooner (or double something or other, can’t remember the details) which the local people had painted as a record of some of the early settlers that came through. Pretty crazy hey.

Another mind blowing thing was seeing how they chose young boys to go on hunting expeditions. It is a little hard to explain but basically the young guys had the be able to make and throw a spear well enough so that it wedged in the crevice of this huge rock out on the floodplains. Now that probably doesn’t sound that hard but this rock was like 80m away from where they were standing and the crevice was about half a centimetre thick. Check out the photos to get a better idea o what I mean. The long sticky things hanging out of the rock are spears. Mental.

Our mode of transport for the day.

This gives you a little bit of an idea about the rock art. It's hard to capture it in one but hopefully you get the general idea.

Me and the rock art.

This is where we had our morning tea. It was under a rocky overhang that had art on the underside and had the most amazing view of the floodplains and escarpment.


When white settlers first made there way up here - god knows how they made it - the local people recorded it on the rocks. I forget the explorer that this boat belonged to though.

This is a close up view of the spears in the rock face. You can just see the black sticks poking out of the crevice.

And this is the view from where we were standing and where the young guys had to throw the spears from. Absolutely mind blowing.