Days under the Northern Territory sun
Having lived in the Northern Territory in the late-80s and early-90s for some eight years, it continually draws me back for more Top End adventures. Under a hot Territorian sun, it boasts some of the world’s best barramundi fishing, along with great pig and buffalo hunting, representing an outdoorsman’s paradise.
The allure of days under the NT sun while hunting the Asiatic water buffalo is our incentive when travelling in a vehicle for three long days. There’s hours of seemingly endless straight, flat bitumen roads with white lines flashing past, then bull dust almost everywhere on corrugated trucking roads of the north. Dodging sharp rocky extrusions and potholes, with providence on our side, we experienced only two punctures but this all became a distant memory as we reached our destination.
Having first hunted buffaloes during the Brucellosis and Tuberculosis Eradication Campaign (BTEC) in the mid-80s, I was eager to see how the species had fared. I returned to the Territory on a number of occasions but had never managed to acquire a quality bull. It always amazes me how these animals had survived so many onslaughts on their being. This includes the BTEC project and of more recent times, their capture for the live export market.
Our party of four hunters consisted of Tobias, his father John, Binga and me. Buffaloes
