How Australia’s wild Northern Territory is readying for Chinese tourist boom
The remote region, the size of Mongolia, intends to almost double its Chinese tourists by 2020 by getting businesses ‘China-ready’. But change is slow and infrastructure still lacking
The night air is still, clinging only to the lingering heat of Australia’s dry Outback landscape. Walking in the darkness, a group of travellers turn their heads to the sky; caught off guard they start frantically pointing upwards. A chorus of “woaaahs” ensues as they exclaim in Mandarin at the beauty of the starry night that blankets this remote part of the world after dark.
Just over 300km from the nearest major city in Australia’s remote Northern Territory, we are dwarfed by the dazzling spectacle.
One man rushes to open a stargazing app on his phone. Positioning it overhead to capture the glistening expanse, he is able to spot various constellations – the same celestial formations that have guided Aboriginal people in this part of the world for tens of thousands of years. Tonight, though, it is all about the show for this awestruck bunch of Chinese and Hong Kong tourists as they soak up their final night in the Kakadu National Park.
“In Hong Kong we cannot see the stars at night time, but here we can,” says 10-year-old Oscar Zheng Cheuk-hang. “In Hong Kong it is polluted and grey.”
This is also true of many large cities in China, such as Shenzhen, an industrial metropolis across the border from Hong Kong where most of the group of 11 live.
Unlike the big cities where most of its visitors come from, this part of Australia does not have to deal with pollution or, indeed, overpopulation – unless you count the wetlands teeming with crocodiles, barramundi, bird life and buffaloes.