Today in the remote Indigenous community of Oenpelli, adjacent to Kakadu National Park in West Arnhem Land, residents can access the internet at speeds comparable to those available in Sydney and Melbourne. By Christmas, the Arnhem Land communities of Maningrida, Ramingining, Gapuwiyak and Yirrkala will also enjoy this high-speed broadband internet access, along with the residents of the mining town of Nhulunbuy on the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Yesterday at Border Store, on the eastern edge of Arnhem Land, local Traditional Owner Mr Jacob Nayinggul celebrated the arrival of the new technology, with a traditional ceremony, as he welcomed guests to his country.

Twenty-four optical-fibre cables, each the width of a human hair, snake 800 kilometres across the landscape, one metre underground in a protective casing no thicker than a man’s finger. The zigs and zags en route ensure that sites of significance remain undisturbed, and take the cable south from Ramingining to skirt around the Arafura Wetlands.

The $34m project — a joint venture between Telstra, the Northern Territory Government, and Rio Tinto Alcan — offers considerable benefit to remote community residents in education, commerce and medicine. Nurses and doctors at remote clinics will now be able to engage in video conferencing with medical experts in southern cities. On-line banking and on-line booking facilities will also become available.

Remarkably, work on this formidable engineering project — which involved tunnelling under crocodile-infested rivers in inaccessible country — was completed in just over two months. Once plans were finalised, the ‘build’ commenced on 19 September this year and was completed by 27 November, with up to 150 people working on the job at any one time.

November 2008 was the fourth hottest month on record in the NT, so conditions on site could not have been pretty. The crew worked against the uncertain deadline of the arrival of the monsoon rains which will shortly sweep across the Top End, making work of this kind impossible.

But this nine-week burst of frenetic activity was preceded by years of negotiations with Traditional Owners, along the length of the route, which were facilitated by the Northern Land Council (NLC). Chief Executive Officer of the NLC, Kim Hill, spoke to the gathering at Jabiru, telling those assembled that the new service will “increase the capacity of remote communities to communicate effectively with the rest of the world, and to enjoy the increased knowledge, information, education, and entertainment that this will give them.”

Next year, the island communities of Minjilang, Warruwi, Milingimbi and Galiwinku will reap the benefit of the optical fibre as they are connected by radio link. In total, over 10,000 people in Arnhem Land will then have access to high-speed broadband internet.

Bringing new technology to an ancient culture requires the kind of caution and prudence which has been exercised in this instance. Access to broadband for these communities strikes a blow against the tyranny of distance, by delivering the world to the desktop, be it in Melbourne or Maningrida.

Graham Ring visited Jabiru as a guest of the venture partners.