On the tip of the Dampier Peninsula, some 200km north of Broome / Rubibi, dragonflies perch on swaying speargrass. The wattles are flowering; tiny golden orbs attracting birds and insects, and down by the ocean, the rock oysters are creamy and rich.
Feature by Carolyn Beasley
This is Barrgana, the dry season on Bardi-Jawi country, where rusty pindan soils drop away to empty white beaches, or a verdant line of sheltering mangroves. It’s where Indigenous cultures are alive and strong, as they have been for millennia, synchronised to nature’s signals.
Guide Barlo Angus of Southern Cross Cultural Walk at Lullumb
Bolo Angus is a Bardi-Jawi man and owner of Southern Cross Cultural Walk at Lullumb.
“This is the season of plenty,” he says.
It’s also the time that most tours on Bardi-Jawi country resume for the year. Bolo leads visitors to his family’s coastal property to experience ancestral stories, survival techniques and bush tucker skills. The tour finishes with a delicious cook-up of foraged food.
Visitors follow Bolo along paths he walked with his grandparents and depending on tides, he may offer fishing with spears, or mud-crabbing. Bolo explains that the female mud crabs migrate offshore to drop their eggs, and to ensure sustainable harvests, Bardi-Jawi people do not fish the females before they’ve reproduced.
Cook-up, Southern Cross Cultural Walk at Lullumb
“When the wattle seed pods turn black and the seeds drop, we know that the female crabs have gone out to sea and then they’ve dropped [their eggs] for the year and then it's good to take the females too.”
Traditionally, Barrgana was the time to hunt dugong.
“The old people, you can imagine they're walking around here with just a hair belt and a pearl shell in front of them,” he says. “Barrgana got pretty cool for them at night.
Migrating humpback whales appeared in Barrgana, and this was the cue to hunt dugong.
“They’d catch the dugong, and stock up on their fat reserves to keep them warm during the season.”
Guide Rosanna Angus of Oolin Sunday Island Cultural Tours
While Bardi Country is on the mainland, Jawi woman Rosanna Angus, explains her traditional country is the offshore islands. Rosanna’s tour company, Oolin Sunday Island Cultural Tours takes visitors to the former mission site of Sunday Island / Ewuny, which operated until 1962.
The tours may depart on aluminum vessels, but Rosanna’s tour retraces the journeys of her ancestors, who deftly balanced on traditional rafts, navigating through the turbulent eddies of Middle Passage and some of the world’s biggest tides.
Oolin Sunday Island Cultural Tours
Rosanna says that with many trees flowering in Barrgana, the bees are coming around too.
“This is when we collect the bush honey, because there’s more nectar around,” she says.
Rosanna says that in her childhood, Barrgana was the best season to spend time at Sunday Island finding the eggs of wading birds like oystercatchers, a tasty treat.
She also recounts that as a young girl, camping at Mudnunn, on her grandfather’s country was something she looked forward to all year.
“This is the season that makes us want to go camping, because it's more comfortable to live off the land and the ocean,” she explains. “Fish are fat, oysters are fat, and stingrays are fat.”
Guide Terry Hunter of Borrgoron Coast to Creek Tours
It’s a sentiment echoed by Bardi man, Terry Hunter of Borrgoron Coast to Creek Tours, based at Cygnet Bay Pearl Farm. He says Barrgana has always been one of his favourite seasons.
“When the season Barrgana starts, the dragonflies come out telling us that the poisonous jellyfish like the Irukandji and the box jellyfish are now going out to deeper water,” Terry says.
The flowering wattles of Barrgana signal a change in fishing strategies.
“Now we know the trevallies are in large schools, and the mullets are starting to fatten up too, so this is when we change over from eating the reef species,” Terry explains.
On Terry’s two-hour Coast to Creek tour, visitors gain insights into bush foods, medicines, and sustainable hunting as they stroll through the mangroves and along the coastline. One highlight is watching Terry build a tiny spinifex fire to cook the juicy rock oysters, pippies and cockles, right on the rocks.
Borrgoron Coast to Creek Tours
For Terry personally, the sudden transition to the cooler weather of Barrgana, has always been a joy.
“As a kid growing up here on the pearl farm, one week we could be in shorts with no shirt on, next week, we'll be all rugged up,” Terry says. “Yeah, the colder seasons for us are probably our best seasons.”
Published May 2023.