Australia Tourism » Kakadu National Park Travel

KAKADU NATIONAL PARK - AUSTRALIA
Look beyond the lush greenery, swollen rivers, blooming flowers and aesthetic fauna of Australia’s Kakadu National Park and you will soon discover that very often danger lurks as close as an arms length away sometimes too close for comfort.

Hurtling along the Arnhem Highway to Kakadu, the signs around water holes and rivers keep us alert and alarmed. The worlds Attacks cause injury or death, are plastered alongside graphically snapping crocodile jaws, warning us never to picnic by the shoreline or we could become the main course. While the Northern Territory is an enchanging place that visitors can really get their teeth into there is obviously a bit of competition from someof the 80,00 or so local residents here.

Land of peril
‘Life jackets are under your seats. So if we capsize, form a circle, I will drop in the middle, and you can protect me as we try to the beat the crocs to shore,- jokes Mandy, our guide, as we embark on the Yellow Water sunrise cruise. Dawn breaks cleanly over Australia’s Top End, tingeing the sky hot pink with the promise adventures. But it’s early for the estuarine crocodiles or salties that cruise Kakadu’s web of rivers and billabongs. By Sun up a few regulars are lurking near mud banks or tangles of tree branches, but it’s difficult to spot the real deal from the logodiles (once facing extinction, with only 10 per cent reaching maturity, it became a protected species in 1971 and numbers have been growing steadily since).

What lurks beneath these moody, dense waters is wonderfully juxtaposed against the lushness of what’s above. Rivers swollen from monsoon rains have turned the floodplains into shimmering sheets of water teeming with life. Fringed by pandanus, bamboo, paperbark trees and monsoon rainforests, we spot night herons, known locally as the “I like myself a lot” birds, as they fly past a admiring their reflections in the tranquil billabong. Happy dancing Brolgas, whistling Kites and Magpie Geese all feast on buffalo grass that carpets the floodplain. Delicate water on blush pinks and whipped creams glow in a waterscape dripping with light.

Still waters run deep
Croc horror stories are legendary in the Northern Territory and our guide recalls one about a pair of European backpackers, who disappeared without a trace during an evening dip in a billabong, a few years back. Over the years, local newspaper headlines have in included “Crocs Stalk Man up Tree for a Week” and “Croc Invades Army Base”, recounting gory tales of people being taken by these cold blooded killing machines, primed and ready to make a meal out of anyone foolish enough to enter their domain. Recently, a boatload of foreign visitors were ooh-ing and ah-ing over a cute wallaby by the riverbank when hello, lunch time!

Keeping distance
“No doubt about it, crocs have some very anti-social behaviour and are always fighting,” says Roman (our second guide along with I Mandy) as we cruise the East Alligator River aboard Guluyambi, known jokingly as ‘Titanic’. “I’m off the river by 6 p.m. as that’s when the big boys come out and play rough,” he says, looking for the telltale bubble trail of a submerged crocodile.

A modern-day Crocodile Dundee wearing aviator sunglasses, khaki shorts and a bush shirt, he takes us on a journey that traces aboriginal links to earth, wind, fire and water. The great sandstone Arnhem Escarpment looms as a rugged backdrop to this ribbon of water that forms a flowing natural boundary between Kakadu and Arnhem Land.

The barramundi are biting, and men slowly motor past in ‘tinnies’ (small metal fishing boats) that seem to be an entirely inadequate buffer between man and beast. “Oh yeah, a trot’s been known to leap into a boat; best to keep moving,” says Roman laconically while demonstrating the impressive bounce-back lightness of a balsa fishing stick over a shop-bought line. Like the croc, this old school technology is so silent and precise that the fish never know what hit them.

Flirting with danger
“Croc at three o’clock!” he exclaims as the world’s largest reptile cruises into view. He’s had us in his sights long before we became aware of him, and two small periscopic eyes are all we see as the murky waterline provides effective camouflage. His jaw resembles a badly stitched, jagged wound profiling huge holding teeth that enable him to take his victim. Prehistoric armour-plating acts like solar panels, and using his powerful tail, his killing technique of choice is tearing the flesh. Seeing one up close, I shudder at the thought while marvelling at 130 million years of evolution, and it sharpens my senses about the unknown and unseen here in Kakadu.

One of Australia’s leading natural attractions, Kakadu National Park is a cultural icon that’s vast in scale but intimate in experiences. A 20,000-sq-km World Heritage Site to be conserved for all time, Kakadu is one of only 20 sites declared so for both its natural and cultural values. It also has mosquitoes and flies that hover around like a squadron of B-52s on a bombing mission...