Borroloola

Borroloola sits on the McArthur River about 50 kilometres inland from the Gulf of Carpentaria — a small town of roughly 1,000 people on Yanyuwa, Garawa, Marra and Gudanji country, and the unlikely gateway to one of the strangest landscapes in the Northern Territory. South of town, Limmen National Park holds the Southern Lost City and Western Lost City — vast fields of sandstone pillars that look like a smaller, redder Bungle Bungles. North–east, the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands hide some of the best barramundi fishing in the country. In between is hot, hard, beautiful Gulf savanna.

Our writer Tegan rolled into town from the Stuart Highway in early July, fishing rod on the roof, ten days of supplies in the back. Borroloola is not a polished tourist hub — it is a working remote community with a fuel pub, a roadhouse, a small supermarket and a tackle shop that knows what is biting. Come for the fishing, the Lost Cities and the country, not for the cafes.

The country and its people

Borroloola township grew up around an 1880s frontier ration post and police station on the McArthur River and has been continuously occupied by Aboriginal communities for tens of thousands of years longer. Today the four traditional owner groups — Yanyuwa, Garawa, Marra and Gudanji — share custodianship of the McArthur River, the islands offshore and the Limmen escarpment to the south–west. The Yanyuwa are saltwater people, with cultural ties running deep into the Pellew Islands; the others are largely freshwater and stone country people inland.

The town itself is small and easy to get your head around in half an hour. The Borroloola Hotel (the "Boro Pub") is the social centre. Across the road, the Old Police Station Museum — restored from the 1880s lock–up and ration store — is the best capsule of frontier and Aboriginal history in the southern Gulf, and worth an hour even if museums are not normally your thing. Take cash; the donations honesty box is the only way it stays open.

Barramundi and the Pellew Islands

Borroloola's first export is barramundi. The McArthur River, the Wearyan, the Robinson and the network of channels and shoals through the Sir Edward Pellew Group offshore make up one of the highest–rated barra fisheries in the country. The barramundi–fishing classic, the Top End Barra Series, has had legs here for years and the local NT Fisheries records suggest the Pellews give up more metre–plus barra per square kilometre than any system in the Top End. Read the recreational fishing rules through NT Fisheries before you wet a line; size limits, possession limits and seasonal closures all apply and they get enforced.

For the islands themselves, you need a boat. The river ramp at the McArthur is the standard launch and most visitors trailer in a tinnie or hire one of the small charter operators based in town. The crossing to West Island is around 90 minutes in good weather; the Pellews proper are another hour beyond. Saltwater crocodiles are everywhere and the tidal range out here is enormous — ten metres at spring tides — so local knowledge is not optional. The McArthur River Fishing Lodge across the river and several smaller operators on Pungalina and Vanderlin Island run guided fly–in fishing weeks that suit visitors who don't want to manage their own boat.

The Lost Cities and Limmen National Park

The other reason to point a car at Borroloola is Limmen National Park, an enormous tract of savanna and sandstone country south–west of town along the Savannah Way. Inside Limmen are two of the most extraordinary geological features in northern Australia — the Southern Lost City and the Western Lost City, both fields of free–standing sandstone pillars sculpted over hundreds of millions of years into shapes that genuinely do recall the Bungle Bungles in the Kimberley, only on a more intimate scale.

The Southern Lost City has the easier access — a short walking loop through the formations, with marked routes that wind between pillars three to five times your height. The Western Lost City is reached only by a permit–and–guide arrangement through Parks NT and the traditional owners, and is the more remote and less–visited of the two. Stay for sunset at Southern Lost City at least once; the western light hits the sandstone and the whole landscape goes vermilion.

Limmen also holds Butterfly Springs (a permanent waterhole), the Bukalara escarpment, and a string of campgrounds. The roads are unsealed and slow — an 80–kilometre drive can take two hours — and the entire park closes through the wet. Carry recovery gear and tell someone your route.

The mine and the controversy

It would be dishonest not to mention the McArthur River Mine. The Glencore–owned zinc, lead and silver operation 60 kilometres south–west of town is one of the largest open–cut zinc mines in the world, and its history with the local community is fraught. A 2007 diversion of the McArthur River around the open pit was approved by the NT government and then ruled invalid by the Federal Court before being legislatively retrofitted; a spontaneously combusting waste rock dump caused major air–quality concerns in the late 2010s; and Traditional Owner groups have pursued multiple legal actions over impacts on country and downstream waterways. The mine remains a flashpoint and the conversation is unfinished.

You will see mine vehicles in town, mine–commute charters at the airstrip and (depending on whom you ask) different views on the mine's role in the local economy. We mention it because it is part of the place and because if you are spending time on country here, the context matters.

Things to do in and around town

Beyond fishing and the Lost Cities, the rhythm is slow. Walk the McArthur River bank in the cool of the morning. Drop into the Old Police Station Museum (entry by donation, open most dry–season weekdays). Take a slow drive out to the Borroloola Cemetery and read the headstones — an entire frontier history in granite. Visit the Mabunji Aboriginal Resource Centre if cultural tours are running. Spot wedge–tailed eagles working the thermals over the floodplain.

If you have a 4WD and a few days up your sleeve, the loop through Limmen down to the Roper Highway, west to Katherine area and back via the Stuart Highway is one of the great undersold drives in the Top End. We have done it twice and would do it again. Pair it with a couple of days in Kakadu area or Arnhem Land if you have the time and the permits.

Where to stay

Accommodation in Borroloola is functional rather than fancy. The Borroloola Hotel has motel–style rooms above the pub; the Savannah Way Motel offers cabin–style stays; and the McArthur River Caravan Park runs powered and unpowered sites within easy walk of the boat ramp. King Ash Bay Fishing Club, 40 kilometres north on the river, has powered sites, basic cabins and a famously friendly club bar — many fishing visitors base themselves there for a week and never come into town. For the higher end, fly–in fishing lodges on Pungalina, Vanderlin Island and the McArthur River Lodge are bookable directly.

In Limmen National Park, the campgrounds at Butterfly Springs, Southern Lost City and Western Lost City are unpowered and self–sufficient. Carry your own water and firewood; the dry–season campfire rules change year to year.

Getting there

Borroloola is on the Carpentaria Highway, 380 kilometres east of Daly Waters on the Stuart Highway. From Darwin it is around 970 kilometres — a full day's drive even with a clear run, two days more comfortably. Most of the road is sealed but the last few hundred kilometres include several unsealed cross–country shortcuts to and from Limmen, so a high–clearance vehicle helps.

By air, Airnorth runs a regular service into the Borroloola airstrip via Tennant Creek; check the timetable before you commit, as flight days change with the season. Many visitors fly into the airstrip and then hire a 4WD locally or join a guided fishing operation that handles transfers. The local government, the Roper Gulf Regional Council, publishes current road condition information for the wider Gulf district that is worth a glance before you set off.

When to visit

The dry season — May through September — is the window. June and July are the sweet spot: barra are concentrated in the lower river systems, the Lost Cities are accessible, days run a pleasant 28 to 31 degrees, and the rangoon creeper is flowering through town. August and September push warmer and the barra start moving as the bait pushes towards the gulf. April and October are shoulder — check road conditions through Parks NT and Roper Gulf council.

November through April is the wet. Roads close, the river floods the lower town flats, mosquitoes are aggressive, and most fishing operations shut. Outside the resident community, the town effectively closes for business. If you have any choice in the matter, you want to be here in the dry.

Eating and supplies

The Borroloola Hotel pub does generous (if no–frills) meals. The Heartbreak Hotel at Cape Crawford, 110 kilometres south–west on the road out to Daly Waters, is the other big pub plate in the region and is worth the drive. The IGA on Robinson Road is your only proper supermarket — stock up in Katherine if you are doing a long trip, because freight prices in town are real. Fuel is available at the BP service station and at King Ash Bay.

Alcohol restrictions apply across most of the Borroloola district under the Northern Territory's broader liquor management rules. The pub is licensed; takeaway sales are restricted and there are dry community zones. Take it seriously — the rules exist because the community asked for them, and the penalties for the wrong move are real.

Why we keep coming back

Borroloola is not pretty in the picture–postcard sense, but it has something rarer — a working remote town that has not been polished smooth, a fishery that genuinely lives up to the rumours, and a hinterland of sandstone Lost Cities that should be on every Top End traveller's list and somehow is not. Tegan put it this way: the best part of the trip was the morning she watched two Yanyuwa kids pull a forty–centimetre barra out of the river by the boat ramp, two minutes from the pub. That is Borroloola — ordinary and extraordinary, sitting side by side, on country that has held both for a very long time.