AustLit

'The family had waited a long time for this. Their father had passed away some six months earlier, in the middle of the wet season in the Top End of the Northern Territory, and his body had been held in a morgue in Katherine all this time. Now that the dry season had begun and the water levels along the rivers and flood plains had receded, some of the remote dirt roads through Arnhem Land were once again open. The family’s outstation on their ancestral Country at Mikkinj Valley was now accessible via a road that ran east from the Aboriginal community of Gunbalanya (also known as Oenpelli), and then west around the other side of the Arnhem Land escarpment, and preparations to bury their father on his Country could begin in earnest. The burial had been planned for August, but with more deaths in the community of Gunbalanya creating a backlog of funerals and limiting space in the local morgue, the date was brought forward. In late June, the body of Nakodjok Nayinggul (or Nakodjok Namanilakarr, as he was referred to post-mortem) was finally returned to the family in a charter plane from Katherine to Gunbalanya.'  (Introduction)