Roper Bar is a location in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...

. It lies on the traditional land of the Ngalakgan people, who refer to it as ''Yurlhbunji''. This part of Australia is extremely remote for travellers, although there are a number of Aboriginal communities in the region including Ngukurr, Urapunga and Minyerri. A

four-wheel drive A four-wheel drive, also called 4×4 ("four by four") or 4WD, is a two-axled vehicle drivetrain capable of providing torque to all of its wheels simultaneously. It may be full-time or on-demand, and is typically linked via a transfer case pr ...

trek through these parts can be an extension of the Gulf Track on a journey further up north to Darwin or

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territorial capital, Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compa ...

Location

Roper Bar is a settlement on the

Roper River The Roper River is a large perennial river located in the Katherine region of the Northern Territory of Australia. Location and features Formed by the confluence of the Waterhouse River and Roper Creek, the Roper River rises east of Mataranka ...

, 606 km southeast of Darwin, 312 km east of

Katherine Katherine (), also spelled Catherine and Catherina, other variations, is a feminine given name. The name and its variants are popular in countries where large Christian populations exist, because of its associations with one of the earliest Ch ...

and 1,235 km from

Alice Springs Alice Springs () is a town in the Northern Territory, Australia; it is the third-largest settlement after Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin and Palmerston, Northern Territory, Palmerston. The name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William ...

. The first European to explore the Roper River was

Ludwig Leichhardt Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt (; 23 October 1813 – ), known as Ludwig Leichhardt, was a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.Ken Eastwood,'Cold case: Leichhardt's disappearanc ...

in 1845 as he made his way from

Moreton Bay Moreton Bay is a bay located on the eastern coast of Australia from central Brisbane, Queensland. It is one of Queensland's most important coastal resources. The waters of Moreton Bay are a popular destination for recreational anglers and are ...

Port Essington Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. It was the site of an early attempt at British settlement, but now exists only as a remot ...

. Leichhardt crossed the river at Roper Bar, a rocky shelf that lies at the high tide limit on the river. He named the river after John Roper, a member of the expedition. The town is a small settlement with a police station, a motel, the Roper Bar store, a caravan park and roadhouse facilities. Fishing in the Roper River, particularly for the prized

barramundi The barramundi (''Lates calcarifer''), Asian sea bass, or giant sea perch (also known as dangri, apahap or siakap) is a species of catadromous fish in the family Latidae of the order Carangiformes. The species is widely distributed in the I ...

, has attracted fishermen to the area. The

Roper Highway The Roper Highway is a road in the Northern Territory of Australia that begins from a point on the Stuart Highway 7 kilometres south of Mataranka, and runs east along the Roper River via Roper Bar to Ngukurr. Its length is 206 kilometres. From ...

is a flat and monotonous, partially unsealed road that connects Roper Bar to the

Stuart Highway Stuart Highway is a major Australian highway. It runs from Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin, in the Northern Territory, via Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, to Port Augusta in South Australia; it has a distance of . Its northern and souther ...

. At the road's end is a tropical river which, like all of the rivers around the

Gulf of Carpentaria The Gulf of Carpentaria is a sea off the northern coast of Australia. It is enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the eastern Arafura Sea, which separates Australia and New Guinea. The northern boundary ...

, is unsuitable for swimming as it is the habitat of the

saltwater crocodile The saltwater crocodile (''Crocodylus porosus'') is a crocodilian native to saltwater habitats, brackish wetlands and freshwater rivers from India's east coast across Southeast Asia and the Sundaland to northern Australia and Micronesia. It ha ...

History

The

traditional owners Native title is the set of rights, recognised by Australian law, held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups or individuals to land that derive from their maintenance of their traditional laws and customs. These Aboriginal title rig ...

of the area were the Ngalakgan Aboriginal people, one of the Gunwinyguan people who traditionally spoke the

Ngalakgan language Ngalakan (Ngalakgan) is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Ngalakgan people. It has not been fully acquired by children since the 1930s. It is one of the Northern Non-Pama–Nyungan languages formerly spoken in the Roper river region of ...

, although today many speak the Arnhem Kriol. The first European to the

hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numerals, Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 (number), 99 and preceding 101 (number), 101. In mathematics 100 is the square of 10 (number), 10 (in scientific notation it is written as 102). The standar ...

was Ludwig Leichhardt who crossed the Roper River at the Roper Bar in 1845, and in 1855

Augustus Charles Gregory Sir Augustus Charles Gregory (1 August 1819 – 25 June 1905) was an English-born Australian explorer and surveyor. Between 1846 and 1858 he undertook four major expeditions. He was the first Surveyor-General of Queensland. He was appointed a ...

passed to the south of the hundred on his route to

Gladstone, Queensland Gladstone () is a coastal city in the Gladstone Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , the Gladstone urban area had a population of 45,185 people. It is by road north-west of the state capital, Brisbane, and south-east of Rockhampton, Queensl ...

. In the 1870s pastoral leases were being taken up, gold had been discovered at Pine Creek to the north and in 1872 a store depot for the

Australian Overland Telegraph Line The Australian Overland Telegraph Line was an electrical telegraph system for sending messages the between Darwin, in what is now the Northern Territory of Australia, and Adelaide, the capital of South Australia. Completed in 1872 (with a li ...

was established at Roper Bar, it being the furthest point up river that was navigable to ships. Roper Bar
''The Sydney Morning Herald''. February 8, 2004. The hundred was anticipated to be the seat of a prosperous port. In the 1890s the area was a favourite stop over for drovers bringing

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, bovid ungulates widely kept as livestock. They are prominent modern members of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Mature female cattle are calle ...

between

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

and the

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia Queensland * Kimberley, Queensland, a coastal locality in the Shire of Douglas South Australia * County of Kimberley, a cadastral unit in South Australia Ta ...

region, and it had a very wild reputation. In 1902 Jeannie Gunn moved to nearby

Elsey Station Elsey Station is a pastoral lease that once operated as a cattle station in the Northern Territory of Australia. Its traditional owners are the Mangarrayi people, whose rights were upheld by the Elsey Land Claim granted in 1997. The property i ...

and wrote of her experience in the area, in the novel '' We of the Never Never''.Rutledge, Martha (2000). "Gunn, Jeannie (1870–1961)".

Melbourne University The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state of Victoria. Its ...

Press. Retrieved 13 March 2007.

References

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