Northern Territory: Anything but grim

Who needs TV when you have a Northern Territory sunset to enjoy? Photo / Supplied

A cowboy is silhouetted on the hilltop, his battered Akubra black against the saffron sky. Beside him a salmon-barked gum tree flushes deeper pink in the sunset, and across the bottom of the valley below, a line of dust drifting up through the scrub marks the track we followed to this lookout. I sip my wine and wait to hear "Cut! That's a wrap, thank you everybody". But instead there's just quiet talk and laughter, the clink of bottle on glass and a sudden raucous chorus from the flock of red-tailed black cockatoos swooping overhead.

This isn't a scene from Baz Luhrmann's Australia, but another glorious evening at Mt Bundy, a 80,900-hectare working cattle station in the Northern Territory, 110km from Darwin. We've trundled here in a campervan, but instead of bunking down in the back, tonight we get to sleep in real beds, with buffalo outside the windows.

First, though, there's a tour of the property and we've bumped along with Scott through the long grass: kangaroos and wallabies bound away between the trees, a black whip snake just escapes our wheels and across a still billabong a trio of brolgas, tall and stately, stand on their long legs in the water.

Scott tells us this is Sunday country, good for one day a week, the rest of the time either too boggy or too dry; and that the stocking ratio is one unit, of cow and calf, to 10 acres of land. To my city-slicker eyes, though, it looks gorgeous: golden grass, pink gum trees, birds everywhere and the buffalo, backlit by the low sun, each with a warm fuzzy aura.

It's all a misconception, I learn later by the campfire and over the dinner table: the bulls would rather attack than submit to being worked in the yards; Scott's daughter dragged home an unexploded bomb from air raids during the war; there are floods, and wicked fires in the Gamba grass that burns at 2000C; crocodiles eat your favourite calves; even going out to the washing line can involve an encounter with a deadly taipan snake.

"Everything here tries to kill you," complains Scott's wife Sue - but it's plain to see that they value the challenge of wresting a living from the harsh conditions, and they love the stark beauty of this country.

In the morning, I watch a kangaroo hop slowly past some horses up to their knees in a billabong, peacefully blowing bubbles, while geese squabble on the lawn. Evan, the quintessential cowboy in his boots and hat, is leading the day's mounts up to the yards to be saddled; and, never mind the dangers, I wish I could go along on the two-day ride upcountry, have smoko by a billabong, a campfire dinner and sleep under the stars.

Compared with the immense Winnebago parked in the campsite, though, with its push-out bay windows, satellite dish and owner crouched over his laptop, our high-top Britz campervan is almost back to nature; and later when we lurch along a red dirt track and stop at a creek to lock our hubs, I feel positively intrepid.