Dotted with painfully spiky spinifex hummocks and large dirt-red termite mounds, oil-rich Barrow Island has been a wildlife sanctuary for millennia.
Snakes, turtles and geckos co-exist on the island off the north-west of Australia with the predatory perentie, an almost two-metre long dragon lizard, one of which stops a busload of hydrocarbon executives as it saunters across the road to the airstrip.
