NORTHERN TERRITORY – As our van lumbers down Litchfield Park Road, the grassy expanse stirs. Where visitors see empty bushland, Tess Atie, a Marrathiyel woman who has spent most of her life in this part of the Northern Territory (NT), sees a land flowing with memory. 

A waterhole tucked into the vegetation is where her sister fought off a crocodile. A nondescript path to the left side of the road is the shortcut she used to take to Batchelor, a small town 98km south of the territory’s capital, Darwin. Up on that hill is where her family once stumbled upon a heap of plane debris from World War II.

Her family’s ties to the land run deep; they lived here long before the area was declared a national park in 1986. In fact, a local hibiscus species found in certain parts of the park is named after her botanist grandfather. 

Throughout our nine-hour tour of Litchfield, Atie introduces my tour group to other aspects of Aboriginal culture. She plays a recording of a wangga – a traditional form of music and dance typically involving the wind instrument didgeridoo and clapsticks – and explains the funeral customs and social dynamics of her mob, the term for a group of Aboriginal people associated with a particular place or country.

She and her husband Greg Balding, 69, do not sugar-coat the chequered history of the Aboriginal people in Australia. The first hour of the tour takes us through the frontier wars of the 18th to 20th centuries and into recent decades. We make a brief stop at an old no-liquor sign while Balding explains how policies like alcohol bans have affected Aboriginal communities.