nyinyikay

friday saw me headed off to nyinyikay, a small homeland on the tip of arnhem bay, i was joining lirrwi tourism in supporting a film crew shooting some reality TV rubbish involving 6 young city things being taken out of the surburban comfort zone and being confronted with challenges to their personal stereotypes. its all pretty voyeuristic and exploitive, but they wanted to shoot an episode in arnhem land, hence we were driving 5 vehicles, 2 towing trailers, in torrential, tropical rain, 4 hours from nhulun to nyinyikay.

we had to cater for 15 crew as well as the cast of 6, so its a lot of resources, tents, stretcher beds, bedding, food and drinks for 21 people for 4 days over easter. given that it had been raining for the last 3 days solid, we were not sure whether we would even be able to get out to nyinyikay , nor whether the cast & crew would be able to fly in on saturday morning.

as it turned out the rain did stop on saturday so we were able to get all the tents set up in time and we had the catering set up on the verandah of the house we were staying in so we had shelter if it rained again. the whole entourage, with thousands of kilos of camera and sound gear, flew in on about 5 seperate small charter flights from gove airport.

between looking after the clients, we were able to get some good fishing in, i think we ended up with about 5 barra that were keepers, half a dozen each of blue salmon, mangrove jack and golden snapper.

all of the families of the nyinyikay community were fantastic with sharing their culture and land with the visiting mob, and its certainly a good example of the potential for cultural tourism in the region and the benefits it can bring to small communities seeking sustainable economic models.

i dont know what the TV show is called even, so i cant tell you to watch out for it anyway, which is just as well because i think the cringe factor will be high.