Drover’s Rest Boab Trees, Bullita

The Drover’s Rest Boab Precinct is significant to the Territory’s cultural heritage. Consisting of seven carved boabs, the precinct is associated with the early pastoral industry of the NT when cattle were driven overland along stock routes to meatworks at Wyndham and Vestey’s Meatworks in Darwin. For more than 40 years the open flats of the East Baines River and Barrabarrac Creek junction provided a rest spot for drovers and their cattle after they negotiated long sections of rough and narrow gorges. While resting, some of the drovers carved their names, pictures and left messages on the surrounding boab trees. The collective result is a range of carving representative of those found elsewhere in the region.