Top End



November 5, 2009

There has been a wealth of really interesting World Beach submissions recently… including a small cluster from a remote region in Northeast Arnhem Land at the top end of Australia. I wonder did they hear the Radio Australia broadcast? I don’t know. I find maps generally, supremely engrossing and the World Beach map particularly so. Each entry stimulates a strong desire to zoom in to the point where the work once existed. To imagine the structure of the land, to visualize the rock, the sense of space, what it would be like to walk across that bit of the earth… valleys mountains rivers cliffs coasts islands… To taste the heat or cool damp air, to smell the plants, the sea… hear the birdcall or feel the sand underfoot. For those of us who yearn to spread our arms and fly, Google Earth is an enormously seductive web tool. Dreams had as a child in which I would glide silently over my house, garden, road to the fields and woods beyond… can almost be replicated now across the world. The magic of technology transports eyes and imagination to the most inaccessible parts of the planet in an instant. And it was thus that I found myself travelling to the – seriously off the beaten track – Top End. World Beach Map Quickly homing in to the immense landmass of Australia.. keep an eye fixed on the top two pink markers. They sit over the Arnhem Land escarpment – a region of the Northern Territory and marked in red on the diagram. World Beach Map Zoom in further and as the right hand marker splits again, bare in mind that the vast unspoiled wilderness below is almost half the size of Britain. Soaring eastwards and closer, lone rough red tracks start to appear traversing the rugged terrain. Finally we reach this far flung northeastern tip of land jutting out into the Gulf of Carpentaria. World Beach Map And still clicking on the plus icon, we can hover above the settlements of Nhulunbuy (middle pic) and Yirrkala (right hand pic) and see clearly the coastline where the work was made. And so to the images submitted. World Beach Map Above left: the beach at Nhulunbuy. Above right: the beach at Yirrkala. World Beach Map In Nhulunbuy Delia, Abigail, Jessica & Anne ‘ looked at the sun and the sea and the sand and made a swirly pattern’ The following four entries were all submitted from Yirrkala boat ramp and simply say ‘we used the stones on the beach to make our sculpture’ World Beach Map By Namanatj World Beach Map By Anna World Beach Map By Dhimurru World Beach Map By Dhukulu I want to know more.


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