Kakadu National Park is vast – any way you think about it. Located at the Top End, it is Australia’s largest terrestrial national park and home to a whopping 30% of Australian bird life.
Something of the grandeur and gravitas of this place begins to make sense when James, a young Bininj man, budding lawyer and Park Ranger, guiding us around the rock art at Burrungkuy, relates a conversation with his uncle, who is one of the traditional owners of this part of Kakadu.
James to his uncle: ‘Some people say there have been humans here 60,000 years. What do you think’. Uncle says: ‘Our ancestors have been here for ever!’ 60,000, infinity, what’s the difference, anyway? James concludes.
Kakadu is one of just four places in Australia (and just 38 in the world) that the United Nations lists as ‘world heritage site’ under both natural and cultural categories.
We are here in the last week of August, when Wurrkeng (the coolest season) is giving way to the start Kurrung – in mainstream ‘Aussie’, it’s almost spring. About 200,000 tourists visit Kakadu each year – not a great number considering the vastness of the park – nearly 20,000 sq kms.
So, even in high tourist season, even on the main road that takes you into Jabiru township, from the gates of the park and back out to Highway 1 at Pine Creek – a total drive of 230 kms+ – you are likely to see more animals than cars, especially in the early morning, including some non-natives, like feral pigs, but plenty of natives too and birds who might just be passing through.
Getting to the sublime via the ridiculous
Kakadu might feel remote. But it is just 150 kms from Darwin to the gates of the national park. And another 100 kms or so will bring you to the little settlement of Jabiru with various accommodation options, or Cooinda with slightly more expensive options.
Darwin has excellent fast chargers. Just south-east of Darwin, Palmerston is your last fast charger until you get back to Katherine.
This means minimally 540 kms, plus the driving inside Kakadu park. All this calculation is bringing on an attack of range anxiety for Co-Pilot – so we stop to top up at Palmerston. Unnecessary.
And talking about the ridiculous, at Humpty Doo, you cannot miss the world’s only boxing crocodile.
There are AC chargers available both at Jabiru and Cooinda. So there is no real cause for range or charger anxiety. You can charge your car overnight if you are happy to pay for a powered caravan site or you can charge on a 3 phase plug at an hourly rate of $10 at Aurora Kakadu Lodge.
Where in Kakadu
Unless you spend your lifetime here, or fly over it for a bird’s eye view, you are never going to see most of Kakadu. Criss-crossed with rivers and marshes, much of the park is not passable by any terrestrial vehicle most of us would drive.
We decided, even before setting off from Perth, to put some limits on this road trip. We go only where the road can take us – and that too is limited by the capacities of a 2 wheel drive.
But our stars are in alignment in Kakadu. Just in the two-and-half days we have here, Co-Pilot finds three marvellous tours with indigenous guides, of rock art sites and a crocodile habitat.
But Jim Jim, the famously high plunge-waterfall is beyond our reach – 60 kms on gravel roads marked 4WD only. I feel like I am missing out on something really important, I say to our guide James, who is clearly wise beyond his years.
He says: ‘Ah, you can miss out on Jim Jim for ever. It is just a trickle now – if you get there, it might disappoint. Come back in rainy season and it’s a 200 metre high wall of water. Blows your mind. Then again, the road there might be washed out! But you are enjoying now, yes?’
Let me see: breakfast with the birds at Mamaluka, fishing with crocodiles at high tide at Cahill’s Crossing, two open air galleries of rock art, old, new, undated, by artists named and unknown. And we finish up at Ubirr with sunset on the rocks. Yes, thanks. Enjoying – now!
Hurry Krishna is Indian by birth, Australian by accident and a slow traveller by choice. She is an occasional travel blogger and has recently joined The Driven’s team of writers. She speaks a number of Asian languages, including English, and hopes to walk, cycle or drive her trusty Kona EV far and wide around the world. Under a different name she is a professor and has written many academic books and papers in her areas of specialist research in Media and Cultural Studies.
I’ll have a word with Ernie Dingo’s manager. How dare he not make himself available to show you around.(the uranium mines)
The effrontery!
I can only apologise on behalf of the rest of the world. (or whoever reads this, whichever is the greater number)
i do hope that you mean no disrespect to the traditional owners and their descendants who have the exclusive authority to act as guides.
Just trying to add some levity where there is none.
Levity? As in humour? Where’s the joke?
Another good report. Stay safe stay relaxed.
🙏🏽