The Traveller's Table: The Roper Bar & Tomato Island

As hard as it was to leave our overnight stop at The Daly Waters Pub, Ben was keen to get onto a Barra! Most people would travel to the famous Roper Bar via the turn off from Mataranka but not Ben. Don’t be surprised.... but of course we took the back road. An unsealed, rough road through stations that took us about 7 hours to travel 350km. That is not a typo!

Luckily, we left Daly Waters Pub early enough to get to the Roper Bar in the afternoon. We had decided not to camp at the crossing itself, but continue along the road towards Borroloola and camp further out on the river. With sun getting low we didn’t travel as far as first planned, about 50km from the Roper Bar we pulled into the “Tomato Island” campsite.

We were expecting a remote and isolated camping experience out here. No people to be seen, privacy, silence.... little did we know. Tomato Island must have had at least 30 other campers, most of them set up for a long stay. There are no facilities and no water but a boat ramp and plenty of room to camp.

As we arrived people welcomed us. We soon found that most people camped here were war veterans and they generally stayed and fished with their wives for the entire dry season. They soon invited us to attend “Happy Hour” where at 5pm every afternoon they all bring their chairs and gather around “The Circle”, sometimes a fire and share their stories about the fish that got away. Monday nights was “Spud Night” and everyone bought their own spuds in foil, tossed them in the fire and cooked their meat on the bbq. It wasn’t long before we realised that “Tomato Island” was more of a community than a campground!

The river here is beautiful and the wildlife abundant. Everyone was catching loads of Cherabin (fresh water prawns) mostly using them as barra bait and keeping the large ones for eating. We didn’t eat any of ours unfortunately and there is a good story behind that! After losing our stash of cherabin to something breaking our pot one of the locals very kindly gave us a 20L bucket full. We hadn’t been catching many fish and people were starting to feel sorry for us! He told us to eat whatever we didn’t use for bait. Ben was out fishing with the 20L bucket over the edge of the boat to keep the bait alive, in a huff and angry that he hadn’t caught his long awaited barra he pulled up anchor and took off forgetting to pull it in. Quickly the rope was snapped off and the bucket of cherabin disappeared! Later that afternoon the locals asked us how we went and said “at least you can eat the left over cherabin”. We didn’t have the heart to tell them we’d lost them all!

We caught a few barra in the roper but unfortunately they had gone off the bite a bit while we were there, but the people sure made up for it. We made some great friends here. We didn’t go without a feed of barra either; the locals looked after us with some beautiful big fillets. It really is such a family here and the welcoming hospitality of the locals is warm and rare.

Although we came for fishing, one afternoon a big boar walked right passed our campsite, can you believe it! I called Ben and we collared the dogs, letting Bear go first. We couldn’t hear a sound and I got quite worried, Bear was on her own as Xena was yet to get her collar on. Finally Xena and Ben were on their way and Bear was holding the boar on her own. A few cuts and bruises but both Ben and the dogs were very proud of themselves. There was a real buzz around the campfire that evening.. finally we had a story to tell.

I know I’ve said it before, but all good things must come to an end. We were leaving “Tomato Island” after 5 nights and heading just up the road to the old crossing. A beautiful area where the water forms 4 tiers of cascades, eventually running off into the river. We decided to camp out here for the night with Ed & Jodie, another couple we had met at “Tomato Island”. They had told us about the Barra they had caught from the waterholes and Ben was keen to give it another try. Ben finally caught a beauty that we cooked up for dinner that night and we all caught a few more in the morning. More importantly, we formed a great friendship with Ed & Jodie and enjoyed a few drinks around a campfire. Magic!

Back on the road, it was time to say goodbye to new friends and hit the road to Mataranka.

P.S We did cross the Roper Bar in the car... impressive with a lot of water flowing over it. I wasn’t getting out for a photo, too scared the car was going to wash away. Bugger! By crossing the bar we were in Arnhem Land but that was as far as we went.