Kakadu

Kakadu is a huge national park in the north of the Northern Territory, covering nearly 20,000 square kilometres. It is jointly managed by the Australian Government and the local aboriginals, so there is a big emphasis on indigenous culture and not just the natural beauty. We stayed at Jabiru, which is a town in the centre of the park. It services not just the park management and tourists, but also the Ranger Uranium Mine, which is only a few km down the road, slap bang in the middle of the national park. We did a 2 hour tour of the mine one morning, during which we were told only 10,000 times how safe the mine is and how necessary nuclear power stations are, and anyway, all new technology starts out as weapons, look at iron and bronze, weren’t they used to make weapons too but you wouldn’t want to try and live without them....... He did rather gloss over the enormous amount of energy used in the mining process, something like 5,000 litres of diesel an hour, plus 4 road trains worth of sulphuric acid trucked each day through the park, and another unspecified quantity of kerosene. At least we got a good photo of John next to one of the big mining vehicles.

Of course, you really come to Kakadu to see crocodiles, and this we did in abundance. We did 2 boat cruises, one on the South Alligator River and one on the East Alligator River (the explorer who named them wasn’t very imaginative) and there were crocs galore – crocs sunning themselves on the bank, crocs with only their eyes peeping out of the water, baby crocs floating next to the boat and great big old crocs swimming lazily along. These are salt water crocs, the kind that eat people, how anyone could ignore the warnings that are everywhere in the park and go anywhere near any river bank is beyond me.

Having got the crocs out of the way, we then turned our steps to some bushwalking. Kakadu has a lot of really good trails and lookouts, quite a few of which provide access to Aboriginal rock art sites. Not all were open at this time of year, it is just the start of the dry season so some walks and walk access roads were still closed, but we walked our feet off. The Eastern edge of Kakadu is a huge escarpment which is the border with Arnhemland, this provides some spectacular scenery and waterfalls, and is the source of many of the rivers and watercourses in the park.

The only downside to our stay here has been the smoke which has permeated the air a lot of afternoons and evenings. They do ‘patch burning’ during the early dry season to reduce the fuel load for when it gets really dry in a couple of months, and some nights the smoke has been as thick as fog. Not thick enough to keep the mozzies at bay though!