Arnhemland is a vast tract of land handed back to the Aboriginal people. To get into this area you need a permit from an Aboriginal Land Council. I had the privilege of spending a couple of nights at Davidson's Arnhemland Safaris camp at Mount Borradaile. A great experience - one is off the beaten track, the Land Rovers drive over rocks and through forest, the electricity is shut off at night, but the feeling of community is intoxicating. A mixture of people here – new agers, hunters of feral pigs, people like me – bumped my head quite a bit. Fishing good too.

There is a lot of wildlife to be seen but I was again grateful to the guides pointing out what I would otherwise have missed. I almost saw and snapped a Northern quoll but I was just too slow. A monitor lizard shinned up a tree like greased lightning. I met spiders which don't weave webs - like the jumping spider which jumps on its prey. Saw the rarest animal I've seen in the wild - Leichardt's grasshoppers (children of Namargon IIRC.)

The bird life really gave me the feeling of being in the wild, of waking up in an aviary! Shadows of skinks on tent wall – remember here I met Judith and Alison friends of Cathy Parker at work! What I might only hope to see in a cage in a zoo here was flying around in plain sight. Or walking on water like the jacana (so-called Jesus bird for this reason.) Being on a boat is a good way of seeing the birdlife. Only managed to snap the sulphur-crested cockatoos, not the red-tailed black cockatoos.

Saw a lot of Aboriginal Cave Art - though wall art is a better description as the Aborigines did their art on any suitable surface (including on top of older art - the impression I got was that as soon as the picture was painted it had served its purpose - these were not galleries.) Their art served so many purposes - as warnings to avoid waking the rainbow serpent, as history of encounters with Macassan traders, as memories of extinct animals like the thylacine or Tasmanian tigers, as magic.

The vegetation can be as lethal as the wildlife. Don't try making tea with the leaves from the ironwood tree.

Shane did me proud on my final morning and we saw the rainbow serpent site (strange, not a habitation as little fire blackened, but according to the landowner Charlie not a ceremonial site either). We also saw quite some varied rock art from finely detailed ships to running men to grass prints. Weird how pictures are layered above pictures. Shane also show me some Leichardt’s grasshoppers which Lynn another visitor is researching. Lynn told me how this grasshopper is restricted, unwilling to fly between the few clumps of its host plants which once were everywhere (one host plant gives grasshopper the brick red, other not so bright). Flew back to Darwin in a small plane - slightly bumpy – in the evening went to see “Spiderman” at a cinema where the tickets were sold at the popcorn counter. Not bad, not a classic, but seem to have the feel of the comics.