How an Australian writer rediscovered herself on the all-female, immersive Dilly Bag tour with the Yolngu people of the Northern Territory
- After eight years away, Rebecca Foreman returns home to Australia, and reconnects with herself on an all-female tour in the Northern Territory
- The Dilly Bag tour is run by First Nations women belonging to the Yolgnu people around the town of Nhulunbuy in Arnhem Land
I returned to Australia after eight years in Singapore and Bali, Indonesia – some of it Covid-19 enforced – landing with a heavy thud back to a changed society; never had I felt more untethered from my country of birth. Resisting the urge to bolt anywhere with a softer approach to the pandemic, my instincts told me that the answer to reconnecting to Australian soil lay within.
Perhaps the answer could be found on Lirrwi Tourism’s all-female, immersive Dilly Bag tour, which is run by women belonging to one of the oldest living cultures on Earth. The Yolngu, or Yolŋu, are an aggregation of First Nations people and the spiritual custodians of Arnhem Land, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Everything I’d read about this tour resonated with me, not least the spiritual meaning of the dilly bag: alongside food and medicine, it is used to carry knowledge.
Day 1
After a soul-sapping early rise for a 7am flight, our tour group – myself, a glass artist, a cattle farmer and her 12-year-old daughter, a retired art teacher and her geography teacher daughter – meets at Darwin Airport.
The Yolngu believe that the land is their mother, healing and guiding their lives, so I am keen to know what the torrential weather represents; a jealous in-law, perhaps?
After the rain delays take-off, we get airborne for the one-hour flight east, to Nhulunbuy. After circling Gove Airport, a break in the weather allows us to land, and we meet our guides for the next five days, Noella, a local Yolngu woman, and Rachel, from Texas, in the United States, who works for Lirrwi Tourism.
Their mutual ease sets the tone as they introduce us to Nhulunbuy (population just over 3,000), the largest town in East Arnhem Land and the business and services hub for the area.