Ask the Local Bininj and Mungguy people about Kakadu, and they’ll politely inform you that there’s no such place. It may sprawl over 7,646 square miles of the Northern Territory, but to these peoples the land now known as Kakadu is a patchwork of tribal territories.
Since 1979, it’s been Australia’s largest national park; a land of red rock, sandstone, bushland and billabongs, not to mention towering termite mounds. It’s the essence of the Australian outback. Buffalo hunting, cattle farming and uranium mining have all been tried here; all have failed. For half the year, monsoons swamp the land; for the other half it’s parched. Tiny Jabiru, a handful of shops, a gas station, and the park’s main office and rangers’ HQ, is the only town.