Kakadu is one of Australia's largest National Parks. It is an impossibly large area that requires years of exploration to see all of its features in all its seasons. All we had was a week - and after our big few days on the road getting up here, taking it easy was a big priority.
We came in from the south on the Kakadu Highway, and stopped at the Park Entrance Station to pick up a pamphlet on the park.
I don't pretend to be a historian, but the history of Kakadu is tied up closely with Aboriginal custodians coming to stand up against mining interests who threatened to destroy their land. One way or another there is a lot of uranium, lead, mercury and arsenic in these hills - and the Aboriginals knew much of this area as 'Sickness Country'. Interestingly as geologists mapped the area, the areas with the highest concentrations of those minerals correlated strongly with the sickness story.
The small display at the entrance station did a good job to introduce the many eras of Kakadu's history, from the ancient geological processes that formed its landscapes, the Aboriginal history here, and then the pastoralists and miners. It is a complex story with many chapters.
Relics from the Uranium Mining at the Park Entrance Station
Our first camp for the night was at Gunlom Falls. A good gravel road deteriorated into a rough track leading to the camping area. A stunning plunge pool at the base of the falls looked inviting. We had heard that the active monitoring and trapping process for keeping Estuarine Crocodiles out of this pool was assisted greatly by a big male crocodile nick named 'The Gate Keeper' who lived downstream. The irony that a crocodile kept this pool crocodile free wasn't lost on us, and we chose not to go for a swim that evening after we set up camp.
