Wallabies, Waterfalls and the Uffizi of Ubirr: Kakadu National Park

“There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.”

Charles Darwin

Darwin, perched on the north coast of Australia’s Northern Territory, is perhaps the perfect city to be named after the British naturalist. With Litchfield National park to its south west, it is just a short hop to a wild menagerie of kangaroos, possums and even flying foxes to say nothing of the gamut of exotic birds that call Litchfield home. However, it is the roaming expanses to its south east that garner more interest. Kakadu National Park.

It is a remarkable place. Expanses extend beyond every horizon, incredible viewpoints are both myriad and mesmeric while an almost a farcical amount of waterfalls and plunge pools offer welcome refreshment to the ailing visitor having hiked any number of the trails on offer. These hikes are not particularly demanding. But they are hot. And the pools, the exclamation marks that herald each walk’s climax, are just the right cool to keep you coming back for more.

At 20,000 square kilometres Kakadu is half the size of Switzerland although as you might expect, its human population is comparatively paltry. However, if you are more concerned as to clusters of crocodiles, wallabies and water buffalo, then it’s a veritable metropolis. Particularly at night. As each day draws to a close, Kangaroos adopt the highways of Kakadu as a kind of hara-kiri-hopscotch, bouncing, hopping and leaping across them with reckless abandon. That is, until they don’t. On more than one morning our drive was tempered by a kangaroo strewn across the road. Limp, lifeless and out of luck.

Visiting in November meant that monsoon season was backstage awaiting its cue. More pertinently, it also guaranteed us temperatures in the mid 40C as a daily norm – without ever feeling truly ‘normal’. It was a smothering, suffocating heat and made its introduction each morning before the scrambled eggs could even hit my plate. Indeed, although Kakadu is a place that essentially guarantees unique and entrancing views, it was often a struggle to drag ourselves from the air-conditioned 4×4 and into the scorching wilderness of the Barramundi Billabong or the Bukbukluk Lookout. As our tour guide along the Yellow River quipped, he has lived in Kakadu all his life but is not even remotely comfortably in the heat. No sane person could be. Even crocodiles, as I learned along that same river, wisely choose to stay deep underwater for most of the day. To such an extent that the ‘Yellow River Crocodile Tour’ was jostling for a position as most poorly branded tour in all of Australia until the sun descended, the temperature dipped and the crocs emerged to both bathe and fascinate.

In one form or another, crocodiles have been on earth for over 200 million years and they embody a remarkable intensity and intrigue. Once they emerged from the river the onlooking buffalo were quickly relegated from headliners to support-acts as our boat rock’d and roll’d with abandon such was the clamour to get a snap of a croc. We need not have fretted. As the sun set in the distance and the temperature moved from punitive to pleasant, a plethora of crocodiles came to the banks as a truly unique evening came to a wondrous end.

Even beyond the flora and fauna, Kakadu offers yet more. Rock art. Centred at two main sites, Ubirr and Burrungkuy, the park exhibits fascinating artwork of indigenous people, in some cases dating as far back as 20,000 years. The art is typically painted on vast sheltered cavernous rocks that form awesome natural galleries, the ‘Uffizi of Ubirr’ even. As a result the paintings themselves are remarkably well preserved given their vintage. Painted predominantly in red from haematite (an iron oxide), they are far more informative than I expected, depicting all manner of animals and stories from The Dreamtime – that time when indigenous people believe the land was inhabited by Ancestral Spirits which often had supernatural abilities.

Most intriguing, even chilling, are the more recent drawings of European invaders. I’ve been to ample museums and exhibitions on the subject of Australia’s colonisation, each creative and informative in their own way. I’ve even read Robert Hughes’ thorough ‘The Fatal Shore’ since landing upon that same shore myself and I can now lay claim to a rudimentary understanding of the devastation that has befallen indigenous people since James Cook came ashore 250 years ago. However, nothing has communicated the tragedy and poignancy that befell indigenous people more viscerally than these slender men painted at Ubirr. Some were armed with rifles, some on horseback, all painted by indigenous Australians presumably baffled, stultified and petrified by the Europeans. By their guns. By their horses. By their white skin and by their clothes. Even the most basic items must have stoked terror and trepidation in their minds when the grim intention of the invaders became clear. It rendered the rock art of Kakadu tremendously profound and illustrates how it is a place that offers far more than waterfalls and plunge pools. It is of extreme cultural significance to thousands of people. And we are fortunate that they choose to share it.

However, please do consider that nothing in Kakadu is likely to be on your doorstep. The drive from our lodge in Jabiru to Ubirr was just under an hour. Getting to Jim Jim Falls was over 2 hours cocooned in a Toyota and anything else worth a kodak moment was at least 60 minutes of tarmac away. Simply put, Kakadu is massive and telling you that it’s the size of Wales is only somewhat helpful. Your comprehension only truly goes the distance after clocking the hundreds of KMs needed to visit the sites. The thousands of kilometres of empty roads, where kangaroos are more numerous than Cadillacs and road signs advise of billabongs and bathing pools rather than burrito shacks or burger joints. It feels untouched but also accessible. Flawless but four-by-four friendly and the long drives do at least offer a welcome reprieve from the omnipotent heat that was always a car-door away.

Australia is a country festooned with national parks. Each is rammed with bush walks, wildlife and all manner of majestic views but Kakadu is of a different order. With its vast horizons and copious trails, it’s an ideal destination for those intent on abandoning the anarchy of big city life and hopefully it becomes an option for more as we move beyond 2020. However, if social distancing is a concept you’re intent on retaining, Kakadu is the perfect place for you.