Making Tracks

Windswept, deserted and just far enough from Darwin to be considered remote, Bare Sand Island is an idyllic sweep of reef and sand on the edge of the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf. The Kenbi clan—who won native title four years ago after the longest running Aboriginal land claim in Australian history—call it Ngulbitjik, and it’s known around Darwin as the home of flatback turtles.

A three-legged estuarine crocodile named Graham stakes out the beach, keeping swimmers out of Bare Sand’s irresistibly blue sea. But the sunsets and starry-night skies are surreal this far from city lights, and the flatback encounters are renowned for turning first-time visitors into turtle research volunteers.

Not much is known about Australia’s only endemic sea turtle, named for its distinctively flat shell. Scientists stab at a 1-in-1000 survival rate, but nobody really knows how close to extinction the flatback is, given that both the Northern Territory Government and the IUCN Red List call the turtle’s conservation status ‘data deficient’.