Get a taste of Aboriginal culture in the Northern Territory

NORTHERN TERRITORY – As our van lumbers down Litchfield Park Road, the grassy expanse stirs. Where visitors see empty bushland, Tess Atie, a Marrathiyel woman who has spent most of her life in this part of the Northern Territory (NT), sees a land flowing with memory. 

A waterhole tucked into the vegetation is where her sister fought off a crocodile. A nondescript path to the left side of the road is the shortcut she used to take to Batchelor, a small town 98km south of the territory’s capital, Darwin. Up on that hill is where her family once stumbled upon a heap of plane debris from World War II.

Her family’s ties to the land run deep; they lived here long before the area was declared a national park in 1986. In fact, a local hibiscus species found in certain parts of the park is named after her botanist grandfather. 

Throughout our nine-hour tour of Litchfield, Atie introduces my tour group to other aspects of Aboriginal culture. She plays a recording of a wangga – a traditional form of music and dance typically involving the wind instrument didgeridoo and clapsticks – and explains the funeral customs and social dynamics of her mob, the term for a group of Aboriginal people associated with a particular place or country.

She and her husband Greg Balding, 69, do not sugar-coat the chequered history of the Aboriginal people in Australia. The first hour of the tour takes us through the frontier wars of the 18th to 20th centuries and into recent decades. We make a brief stop at an old no-liquor sign while Balding explains how policies like alcohol bans have affected Aboriginal communities.

“I need to be very truthful when we have these conversations about the treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia, because it’s something that I have gone through,” says Atie, 49, who describes her own family as “broken” by decades of systemic injustice. She is the only one of her siblings who graduated from university.

“Most of my family are in jail or walking the streets, which is why you don’t see many Aboriginal people in Litchfield. But I’ve chosen to be in this space, and I’m trying to make a difference.” 

She started her tourism company, Northern Territory Indigenous Tours, with her husband in 2009. “At the time, there weren’t too many businesses in the industry run by Aboriginal people, and I looked to create something that could help people view the country through an Aboriginal person’s eyes.” 

According to research conducted by Tourism Australia, more tourists are seeking out such perspectives. In 2025, it found that 83 per cent of Singaporean travellers to Australia would be open to Indigenous experiences.

International travellers are most interested in experiencing an art or cultural display, while domestic travellers are more likely to visit an Aboriginal site or community, according to a 2024 Tourism Australia report. 

Who wants the ‘real’ story?

Arrernte man Brodie Roesch, who leads tours in Standley Chasm in Central Australia – prices start at A$120 (S$108) a person – is pleasantly surprised by the growing curiosity about Aboriginal culture.

“It’s very interesting to me, when people have never heard of these things that I’ve known my whole life. But I’m proud to talk about them and share my culture,” he says. 

That includes pointing out local plants along the path to Standley Chasm – lemongrass, for instance, which can be used to remedy pain and colds – and teaching visitors how to crack open and eat a bush coconut. 

As we approach the 80m-high quartzite walls, he pauses and tells us that this is a site sacred to Arrernte women. “I can get as far as probably the biggest boulder, but then I’ll start to feel goosebumps like butterflies and razor blades in my stomach, feelings like that. And that’s just my spirits telling me that I know I’m not allowed to be in there.” 

So he leaves us to venture forward on our own, past the red rust walls and towards the shallow pool at the end of the chasm. 

Male tourists are welcome to walk through, but some elect to wait out front with Roesch. “Just the other week, I had a group from Papua New Guinea. All the women went in but the men stayed back. They said they could feel goosebumps and things like that.” 

On the whole, he says, most tourists treat his stories and the environment with respect. Atie’s tours, which promise visitors the “real” story, have also been well received. Her nine-hour Indigenous Litchfield tour (A$496 an adult and A$248 a child) is the company’s most popular programme, with up to 13 tours a month conducted at the height of the dry season.

Occasionally, though, the heavy political content makes some guests uncomfortable. “Some people cut that conversation really quickly. We’ll talk about the serious stuff and they’ll bring up a question about something unrelated,” says Atie.

For Atie and Balding, it is all about balance. “We don’t go on about history all day. It’s just like an introduction, so they can come out here with some context. You’d be surprised how many people don’t realise the extent of the impact of colonisation,” says Balding.

The other part of their job involves managing expectations. Even well-meaning tourists sometimes ask Atie if she lives in a hut in the bush. “No, I mean, I run a business and I drive a Toyota,” she quips. 

Participants are promised a freshly cooked meal made with local ingredients, but she knows certain bush foods like turtle would not go down well. “The blood makes them squeamish. People will ask me, ‘How can you bear to kill your pet?’ But it’s not my pet!” 

Lunch, for us, is barramundi fillet grilled over an open flame and seasoned with lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf. On the side are store-bought brie and cheddar cheese, crackers, salad, fruit and a pot of chocolate dipping sauce. Not the most traditional spread, but delicious nonetheless. 

Can supply meet demand?

While Atie does not mind sharing her personal history and supplying the “smiley Aboriginal face” that visitors expect, not all Indigenous people are comfortable stepping into that role. 

“Lots of my family don’t like sharing that stuff, and many of my Aboriginal colleagues have stopped working in tourism because they’re tired. The expectation is so huge and it’s very, very heavy. Even I can feel myself getting long in the tooth,” she says. 

Because it is such an emotionally draining topic, she relies on Balding, who is white Australian, to explain the country’s brutal history. The couple also conduct other types of programmes, such as birding tours, which give her a chance to recharge emotionally. 

In recent years, the government has ramped up support for Indigenous tourism with initiatives like the Northern Territory Aboriginal Tourism Accelerator Program. Since its launch in 2023, it has equipped 32 Aboriginal business owners with the know-how to grow their operations.

Government agency Tourism and Events NT also supports majority-owned Aboriginal businesses and organisations with funds to enhance their products and offerings, and launched the Aboriginal Cultural Tourism Framework in 2025 to support the development of sustainable, culturally appropriate tourism.

However, finding people to sustain these businesses takes more than just funding. Atie herself struggles to recruit Aboriginal guides. 

“They understand the country perfectly, but it’s the picking up people in the bus, talking to people, entertaining them through the tour – the customer service side proves challenging.” 

Roesch does not have many colleagues in this line of work either. At present, he says, there are only two Indigenous tour guides working at Standley Chasm.

It is hard to grow their numbers because not all Aboriginal people speak English, he points out, and given the region’s fraught socio-political background, many might be uncomfortable interacting with outsiders. 

Aspiring tour guides have to obtain a commercial passenger vehicle licence (or an “H” endorsement), which requires a criminal history check. “That’s the biggest thing that holds Aboriginal people back,” says Atie. 

According to a 2025 ABC News report, an average of 41 Aboriginal people in the NT are taken into custody every day, an increase of 123 per cent since 2019. The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, a legal aid provider, says recent data shows that Aboriginal people are significantly over-represented in the Australian prison system, with incarceration rates far higher than those of the general population. 

“So we’ve got to go into communities starting when these kids are in Year 12 or Year 11, and tell these Aboriginal kids that once you get a criminal history, you might not be able to go into tourism,” Atie adds. 

Appropriation v appreciation

With a greater interest in Aboriginal culture comes a growing appetite for Aboriginal food. When Rayleen Brown started her Indigenous catering business Kungkas Can Cook in 2001, she recalls bush foods written off by some Australian culinary circles as “roadkill”.

“When I started working in the tourism industry, the only people who were interested in utilising my business were international companies, who were really keen to try everything they could from Australia,” says the 62-year-old Ngangiwumirr and Eastern Arrernte woman. 

As she lays out a tasting spread of quandong jam, saltbush pesto and pepperberry aioli in the Olive Pink Botanic Garden in Alice Springs, she adds: “We’re lucky to still have the knowledge alive, especially in areas like the Northern Territory, because a lot of people lost their knowledge of their bush foods.” 

To help them revive some of this knowledge, Brown conducts tours in and around Alice Springs. For instance, her 1½-hour tour of the botanic gardens introduces visitors to bush foods grown there and lets them sample some native ingredients. It can be booked through her website, and prices start at A$540 for a group of up to four people. For groups larger than four, the rate is A$135 a person. 

Attempts have also been made to encourage more restaurants to embrace bush foods, but the high turnover rate of chefs means these ideas rarely take root. She is heartened, however, by a growing crop of chefs, both at home and abroad – including those working in Singapore – who love to experiment, and who have a “lot more respect for where food comes from”. 

Yet, Brown cautions against exploitative practices that extract knowledge from Indigenous communities without adequate compensation. It is especially difficult to give credit where it is due in these circumstances because so much Indigenous knowledge is passed down orally, without the guard rails of intellectual property laws. 

To ensure that Aboriginal people benefit from the percolation of ecological knowledge, the First Nations Bushfood and Botanical Alliance Australia, an organisation which she chairs, seeks to protect the intellectual property rights of Aboriginal people and advocates for fair and transparent partnerships. 

Initiatives include developing an ethical trade framework and form of certification that identifies businesses working respectfully with Aboriginal knowledge and communities. It also conducts workshops to help Aboriginal communities better understand the bush foods and botanicals value chain, as well as the role those communities play in the industry.

She says: “I think these foods deserve to be shared, and I want people to grow them in their gardens. But I also want them to understand the real history of these plants and how they were used and honoured through stories, song lines and ceremonies.”