Tim Flannery and John Doyle return to Darwin once the wet season is over…well not quite! It's time to resume their journey across the northern frontier of Australia investigating the future of the deep north.
On Darwin's foreshore Tim finds a tamarind tree, evidence of an earlier people who were drawn to the North. At the Darwin museum is further evidence of the many visitors to Australian shores.
Northern visitors have met with a mixed reception. But one 'invader' is unashamedly despised and now the target of vigilante mobs operating under cover of darkness - cane toads. John and Tim take part in a cane toad muster and see how the pests can be put to good use - as fertiliser.
Keen to experience the vast flows of water still surging around the Top End before the dry season fully sets in, John and Tim head for the Mary River. With so much water in the north men once had a vision, and the vision was rice. At Humpty Doo a hundred thousand hectares of rice were planned, but never eventuated. It's a testament to the difficulties of farming this extreme land.
Back on the Savannah Way, John and Tim head west and encounter a Top End dream that did eventuate. Lake Argyle is the centrepiece of the Ord River Scheme, a dam that can hold 10 times more water than Sydney Harbour. But they soon discover that this massive amount of water is only used to irrigate 14,000 hectares of land, and that the main crop is not rice, cotton or wheat…but sandalwood.
John and Tim find it difficult getting a handle on The Ord. Is this to be the nation's new breadbasket? Or is its potential far more modest? Either way, there's enough growth in mining, agriculture and tourism to make nearby Kununurra one of the boom towns of the north.
Nearby is the start of the Gibb River road, one of the great 4WD journeys in Australia. But there's a problem. The road is closed...
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