The lightning over Darwin this afternoon was a sight to behold, twisting across the hot northern sky and belting the horizon with enough spectacular force to suggest that God might be about to dust off any New Testament sensibilities and get into the smiting business all over again. But this being Darwin, the storms are something of a spectator sport, best watched over a beer or a chilled wine on the verandah of a pub.
When the rain came, it was a tropical deluge. And then, after a handful of noisy minutes, it was over. Rinsed and refreshed, Darwin stirred back into life.
Now it’s grinding towards midnight and, apart from a gecko stammering away like a machine gun on helium, all I can hear is water dripping from the tamarind trees and pandanus palms. Australians, who tend to name things in a fairly matter of fact way, know this as the wet season.
In the morning I’m bundled onto a small plane bound for Bamurru Plains on the edge of Kakadu National Park. It's still fairly early as we buzz down the runway, but towers of cloud are already thrusting into the sky, holding the promise of some high voltage, apocalyptic excitement later in the day.
As Darwin's skyline recedes, the scale of the wet begins to reveal itself: the countryside I've known as a brown, smouldering expanse has become an inland archipelago. Rivers such as the Adelaide – a distinctive, serpentine vision in the dry – have had their edges blurred and are in danger of fading into a vast quilt of swamp and drowned flood plains. The crocodiles, which can grow to the length of cement trucks up here, must be in heaven. And the green. My god, the green.
A standard lament among Australians coming home from northern hemisphere holidays is that it’s such a dreadful shame this country – with its evergreen trees and mild to hot temperatures – doesn’t have distinctive seasons. They obviously haven’t experienced a ‘Top End’ year. There’s the dry, with its clear skies and warmth, its wisps of smoke and gentle browns. Then there’s the build-up, which sends people batty with its humidity and torments them with spectacular but dry electrical storms, before finally cracking open with the deluges of the wet.
The wet is a time of cleansing, renewal and richness (and the occasional cyclone) as vivid as any European spring, but with a scale and almost aggressive energy that suggests Old Testament rather than fairytale. Until now, most visitors have preferred the dry season which, despite providing some notable advantages such as unflooded roads, is a fairly mellow affair. But people are finally waking up to the complete sensory intoxication of the wet.
Many of the more remote properties shut down over the wet, only opening their doors to guests in April at the start of the dry. One of the slowly growing number of exceptions is Bamurru Plains, a new luxury bush camp on the fringe of Kakadu National Park that is up and running by the beginning of February each year. It’s only 20 minutes from Darwin by light plane (or under three hours by car during the dry months) but Bamurru – with its lodge, cabins and crystalline infinity pool perched on the edge of a great floodplain quivering with birdlife, water buffalo, barramundi and crocodile – feels light years from anywhere.
It’s barely any time since I was collected from Bamurru’s airstrip and I’ve already been welcomed at the lodge with a cool flannel and a cold drink, and ushered out onto the deck. Water buffalo plod darkly through the floating savannah of spike rushes. Mobs of diminutive wallabies crop the grass just metres from where I’m sitting. The whole place seems to gently vibrate with the honking of magpie geese - rather appositely, Bamurru is from the local Aboriginal name for the magpie goose.
My digs for the night are an exercise in refined simplicity. It’s a cabin with several screened walls providing uninterrupted views of the comings and goings on the floodplain. The beds look a bit like swags, but are fitted with rich cotton and the shower is big and open with a stone floor. There are no stereos, no televisions, no telephones and no mobile coverage. The idea is to keep the small number of guests immersed in the sights and sounds of the natural world.
