Kakadu is Calling

Steve* welcomed us to country by inviting us to roll up our pants and walk into the ocean. For those of us interested in a brisk sponge bath we could also splash water under our arms in order to mix our bodily fluid with the land. In this way we could become part of the land, be protected, and be able to call upon the land should we run into any problems later on. In locations where crocodiles were present the ceremony was modified accordingly. You could rub a stone under your arm and throw it in the water instead.

I had dreamed about visiting Kakadu National Park ever since my first trip to Australia. I was enthralled by stories of floodplains, billabongs, tidal flats, and coastlines – amazing wetlands home to a variety of bird species. But as I entered Kakadu it was clear that much of the park was composed of savannah woodlands, hills and ridges, and stone country. These terrestrial habitats are amazing in their own right. The savannah is composed of eucalypt trees and tall grasses and supports a greater variety of plants and animals than any other habitat in the park. The hills and ridges have formed as a result of millions of years of erosion and have an unusual geology, including silver, lead, zinc, gold, and uranium deposits. Several species of plants have adapted to this unusual soil and as a result are highly endemic – occurring nowhere else in the world. Stone country consists of a sandstone escarpment. Rock shelters have formed in places where the escarpment is quickly eroding at rates of one meter every 1000 years.

The name Kakadu comes from an Aboriginal floodplain language called Gagudju, which was spoken in the northern part of the park until the beginning of the 20^th century. Kakadu National Park is quite unique – it’s listed as a world heritage site for both its cultural and natural heritage. It contains extensive collections of Aboriginal rock art and the traditional lands of a number of Aboriginal clan groups, including the Jawoyn. It is also the only national park in the world which protects the entire catchment of a large tropical river, the South Alligator. Captain Phillip Parker Smith, an early European explorer, miss-named this river – he mistook crocodiles for alligators.

Our first stop within the park was Gunlom waterfall creek, located on the upper South Alligator River. Bula, the most important Jawoyn creation ancestor, created the landscape we were now hiking through. He came from the northern saltwater country with his wives, the Ngalenjelenje. As he hunted across the country, he created various features of the landscape and left his image as paintings in rock shelters. He also brought along with him other creation ancestors – garrkayn (brown goshawk) who created parts of the landscape and brought the law with him, barrk (black wallaroo), belerrk (gecko lizard), ngarratj (white cockatoo), gupta (plains kangaroo), and bolung (rainbow serpant). Eventually Bula went underground in the plunge pool below Gunlom waterfall where his ngan-mol (sprit) lives today. Though he is an important live-giving spirit, he can also cause lightening storms and big winds if he is disturbed. We noticed several people swimming in the plunge pool and hoped they were not disturbing Bula.

The climb to the top of Gunlom was nearly vertical in places. At the top we could see the Kakadu lowlands stretch before us and we tried to imagine the same landscape covered with several meters of water during the wet season. Gunlom is also part of buladjang, or sickness country. Aboriginal people have left cave paintings depicting humans with enlarged body parts, ulcers, and tumors. Pregnant Aboriginal women are forbidden to travel through this country and will walk hundreds of kilometers out of their way to avoid this place. Others who pass through this land do so quickly and do not linger. Interestingly, Aboriginal people have good reason to fear this region. There is a strong correlation between the location of potentially harmful mineral deposits, such as uranium, and the locations of sites Aboriginal people are taught to avoid.

Gunlom’s high waterfall acts as a natural barrier to crocodiles, so we swam in the rock pools at the top of the falls and took in the superb views in complete safety. The waterfall was quite warm – heated by the powerful sun and dark colored rocks during the day. Spray from the waterfall created a moist micro-habitat for several tiny black frogs clinging to the rock.

Bill Neidjie, an Aboriginal traditional owner from the Bunitj clan, worked tirelessly to get Aboriginal land rights within Kakadu recognized. However, he broke with tradition in several key ways. Several years before his death he wrote a book, Gagudju Man, which details his life, knowledge of Kakadu, and details about Aboriginal law, activities, and practices. His book represents quite a feat because Aboriginal stories and knowledge are not usually written down since they result from an oral tradition. Bill realized that there weren’t many Aboriginal traditional owners left and many young Aboriginal people did not show an interest in what he had to teach them. He broke with tradition and wrote down his knowledge in hopes that people from other cultures would be interested in learning and preserving his stories so they would not be lost forever. Often in Aboriginal culture it is not appropriate to use names or display images of deceased people. Again Bill broke with tradition. His name and picture are still used – he did not want people to forget his stories just because he had died.

One of his stories that struck me the most was that of Aboriginal people living along Kakadu’s coast who rely on resources from the sea. Fishermen from different clans fish within clearly demarcated boundaries despite the fact that these boundaries are not marked with buoys or ropes. Instead they rely on a series of turn-around points based on knowledge that has been handed down through the generations. Upon approaching these points, fishermen turn their boat in the opposite direction because a boundary has been reached. The turn-around points correspond to underwater features – seamounts, ridges, canyons – which the fishermen can’t see but have been taught are there. It amazes me that Aboriginal people consistently identify turn-around points based on boundaries established when sea level was hundreds of meters lower during the last ice age and these clans inhabited a terrestrial landscape. As the oldest continuous culture on this planet, Aboriginal people have witnessed, experienced, and recorded major environmental changes that have taken place over the course of many human generations.

It is quite thrilling for me, as an environmental scientist, to tap into a bit of this living environmental history and learn how people describe and explain these changes and how they have managed to adapt. I try to imagine oral histories that stretch back 60,000 to 80,000 years, about the length of time Aboriginal Australians have inhabited the land down under. It is like a living glacial ice core or deep sea sediment core that allows us to understand past environmental changes in a human perspective.

As night fell at our Jarrangbarnmi camp site we looked up at the night sky and learned how the stars came to be and how echidnas got their spikes. The creation ancestor belerrk (gecko lizard) was known for his great hunting skills. One evening he was sitting around the fire enjoying the tasty morsels from his hunt. Echidna was a very lazy hunter and did not have anything to eat on this particular night. But he could smell gecko’s campfire and his stomach began to rumble. He snuck over and stole some of gecko’s food. Gecko caught echidna and decided to teach him a lesson about being a lazy hunter and stealing food. He threw echidna into the fire and echidna’s lush fur went up in flames. The sparks from the flames drifted skywards and became the night-time stars. Echidna’s fur became hardened spikes in order to always remind him of his miss-deeds.

In the morning we hiked from our camp up Koolpin Gorge, scrambling over loose rocks and boulders and navigating narrow rock ledges.

When we got to the top of the ridge the waterfall and plunge pools below were still bathed in early morning shadows and we soon realized that we had the entire gorge to ourselves. The water was crystal clear and supported several fish species – saratoga, barramundi, eel-tailed catfish, and black banded grunters. When I held my legs still underwater the fingerlings came up close and investigated my shadow and the sediment I had stirred up.

During the course of our hike we learned several invaluable Australian bush skills. It is important to walk at a brisk pace and always keep moving. If you stopped or lingered green ants were likely to propel themselves from tree branches and the grass onto you. And if you stopped to brush them off, more would take their place and continue to bite you. Bush tucker (i.e. bush food that can be safely eaten) is all around but you have to know what to look for. We learned how to pick up the green ants and touch their abdomen to our tongues for a quick burst of lemon-lime flavoring. Aboriginal people would grind up a green ant nest to flavor their tea and cure congested sinuses. A yellow, edible flower was also in season and we ate this for a treat as well.

We started off the next day at Maguk, a swimming hole along Barramundi Creek. Accessing Maguk was fairly easy – a leisurely hike through wetlands, sandy stream bottoms, and rocky out crops. We swum through the canyon and hiked in the creek’s headwaters. This was the perfect habitat for carnivorous sundews which lined the nutrient poor, but moist rocks of the headwaters. Sunlight glistened off the sugary dew and the small, spoon-shaped leaves were outstretched, eagerly waiting to lure in a passing insect.

In the afternoon we headed to the Yellow River Wetlands, part of South Alligator River floodplains. We spotted a huge crocodile cruising the water. Eventually he stopped at the edge of the water lilies and patiently laid in wait for the water birds foraging in the area. Every now and then he gave away his presence by releasing a few air bubbles. As one of the birds got closer and closer everyone in our group was secretly hoping we’d see the croc grab and eat the bird. There was a flurry of water and feathers which happened so fast that the group was divided over whether the bird had been a goner or not.

Aboriginal parents remind their children not to get too close to the water’s edge by telling them the story of the Namakkarri sisters. These two girls were particularly cheeky towards other people and one day decided to turn themselves into crocodiles and scare anyone who got too close to the edge of the billabong. At the end of the day they turned themselves back into human girls. But they soon realized that they missed being huge, scary crocodiles. So they turned themselves back into crocodiles for good. The bumps behind each of the crocodiles’ eyes are a sign that the spirit of the Namakkarri sisters live within crocodiles to this day. You must always be careful near the water’s edge or the sisters may get cheeky and decide to eat you!

While Yellow Water had patches of open water, huge swaths of the wetland were covered in a mat of floating aquatic vegetation. This gave me a false sense of being surrounded by stable, solid land. There was also evidence of several pest (i.e. invasive, non-native) species which had found their way into the wetland and were reeking havoc. Australian soils and wetlands are not adapted to hooved animals such as pigs and horses. All mammals native to Australia have soft, padded feet. Hooves of wild pigs and horses trample and rip up Australian vegetation, leading to soil erosion. A portion of the wetland had been turned into a mud bath by wild pigs and we spotted a group of wild horses grazing in the distance. These animals are usually shot and removed during off-tourist season so as not to offend visitors. Pigs and horses aren’t ‘bad’ per say, but they are responsible for environmental damage when they are introduced outside their normal range and into ecosystems which are not adapted to them.

Australians of European descent who live in the Kakadu area recognize six months of wet season followed by six months of dry season. But Aboriginal calendars are immensely more complex. When your way of life – what’s available to hunt, what’s growing in order to forage, and where it’s safe to live - is intimately linked to the world around you then it is by no coincidence that you become a keen observer of nature and the cycle of seasons and of life itself. I wondered how much change people like Bill Neidjie had witnessed over their lifetime. Various industries – buffalo hunting, prospecting, mining, and pastoralism – have been introduced onto their lands. They have been exposed to diseases which they cannot understand and are not explained in their creation stories. During World War II many Aboriginal people living in Kakadu were moved away from their lands and onto army control camps in the Katherine-Pine Creek area. How much change can a highly adaptable, in-tune people successfully cope with if it is change outside of their normal experience and happens at a rate much faster than they can develop coping mechanisms?

The following day we hiked on the burnt-umber sandstone plateau above Twin Falls enjoying the sandy and rock lined creek, colourful bird life, and tasty nectar-producing wattle. We spent the morning and early afternoon at an idyllic swimming hole. As I walked along the creek bed, I disturbed algae growing on the rocks. Fish in the vicinity darted towards these patches of disturbed algae. When they were done getting their fill, I scraped off algae covering a different rock and the fish migrated to this new patch. The large rock in the center of the creek provided an especially good view of several rainbow colored bee-eaters. These birds swooped in the air, caught dragonflies, and then beat them against a branch in order to get a tasty snack. A shady rock ledge complete with ancient rock art served as our lunch-time shelter from the sun. After seeing Twin Falls from the top it was interesting to see it from the opposite direction.

We packed up the remains of our lunch and hiked down the escarpment in order to take a shuttle boat to Twin Falls Gorge. We soon realized where the falls got its name – there wasn’t one but two huge jets of water eroding the escarpment. A few low-growing trees on the sandy beach provided shade as we tried our best to avoid the hot afternoon sun.

I enjoyed our drive to the Sandy Billabong campground, our camp for the evening, because we ran over several infamous cane toads. Cane toads originate from South America and were introduced to Queensland, Australia to control beetles which fed on sugarcane and reduced farmers’ crops. The only problem was that the Australian beetle fed a bit higher on the sugarcane than its South American counterpart. Since cane toads are big and fat and cannot really hop, they were not able to control the cane beetle. And on top of this they secreted a poison toxic to anything that kills anything that tried to eat it – domestic cats and dogs, birds, etc. Slowly the cane toad has spread to other parts of Australia, including the Northern Territory and Kakadu National Park. Unfortunately ecologists and conservationists expect the toad to wreak havoc on Kakadu’s birdlife. Birds who call the Kakadu wetlands home have attempted to eat the toad, with disastrous results. Only one species of bird as learned how to avoid the toxin by flipping the toad over and eating just the belly portion. Since the toads reproduce at an enormously high rate and have virtually no predators in Australia, it’s difficult to control their numbers once they’ve become established.

Environmental groups are joining forces to try and prevent the toads from entering Western Australia. Scientists have engineered elaborate traps to catch the toads and have deployed them along the Western Australia and Northern Territory border, but its 900 km long. For each kilometre, for each trap, there are hundreds and thousands of cane toads. Each night they might not hop very far, but I fear that eventually they will reach Western Australia.

On our final day in Kakadu we had the privilege of seeing Ubirr, one of the park’s famous rock painting sites. It consists of several rocky overhangs where Aboriginal people retired during the wet season and used rock paintings to depict their physical, social, and cultural environment. Our first stop was at Mabuyu overhang which contained simple red ochre paintings unadorned by other colors. These stick-like mimi figures, as Aboriginal people refer to them, represent an older painting style. Mimi’s first taught Aboriginal people how to paint and they demonstrated this process by painting their images on cave walls. The reason why mimi are so thin is because they live in the cracks between rocks. They have other special powers as well that allow them to leave their images at places out of reach to normal humans. While mimi’s have bestowed the gift of painting you must watch out because they are known to steal Aboriginal children.

Aboriginal paintings record climatic changes as well. Dreaming stories explain how lightening was created and how the area became wetter and filled with wetlands and fish. The monsoon season with its lightening and rain became an integral part of Kakadu’s landscape several thousands of years ago. Fish, turtles, lizards and other aquatic animals important in the Aboriginal diet line the rock walls of the main art gallery. These paintings record how good the catch was from one year to the next. The x-ray style emphasizes the animals’ internal organs and teaches up-and-coming hunters which parts are particularly good to eat and which parts should be avoided. The animals are often covered in cross-hatching and Aboriginal people explain that this makes them appear to shimmer, thus emphasizing each animal’s spiritual and life-giving power.

Snippets of contact art are also present. Non-Aboriginal people are painted with white ochre and either have their hands in their pockets or are carrying axes and firearms. Other, more subtle changes are depicted as well. In the upper left-hand corner of the main gallery a Tasman tiger has been painted in plain red ochre indicating that the painting is 5,000- 8,000 years old. This creature went extinct on mainland Australia around this time because Aboriginal people introduced the dingo which out-competed the tiger. The Tasmanian tiger is rumoured to have survived from dingos and other human pressures in remote parts of the Tasmanian wilderness, but no human has seen a live tiger for several decades.

The main gallery was spectacular because I had never viewed art in this type of setting before, the outdoors, the very place which inspired its creation and provided an ideal canvas. It was easy to imagine various families gathered under the overhang, returning from hunting and gathering waterfowl, mussels, wallabies, goannas, echidnas, and yams from the East Alligator River and floodplain. We were standing on the very pallet used to grind the ochre into paint. It consists of three holes the size of grapefruit, tangible reminders of a rich tradition. Looking at the paintings was like going back in time. In my mind I peeled away the layers upon layers of paint to see what lay beneath. What stories were the elders telling about the country and proper ways to behave while waiting out Gudjaweg (monsoon season) in a safe, comfortable rock shelter surrounded by their loved ones?

According to Aboriginal Law one can paint over previous paintings, but never touch-up or improve upon a past painting. Since many Aboriginal people no longer paint on rock walls, it is important to preserve those paintings which are left. Silicone drip lines help to divert water away from the art. Fences and paths have been established to keep eager tourists at a safe distance. Wasp nests and insect tunnels are removed.

We took a branch in the track in order to view a painting which explained why young, unmarried women could not eat fish. In the Dreamtime, two young girls went out collecting food and accidentally wandered into the next tribe’s territory. They came to a waterhole, were hungry, and decided to each catch a fish to eat. They then returned home, but somehow the neighboring tribe learned that the girls ate fish from the waterhole. Several tribesmen formed a search party to find and kill the offending girls – the penalty for young, unmarried women who ate fish. But the girls protested to members of their own tribe, “We were just hungry and a bit lost. We knew we shouldn’t have eaten the fish but we needed to fill our stomachs with energy in order to return home.” Their tribe proposed a less harsh punishment – a severe warning to the girls to not eat fish again.

At first we wondered why young women were banned from eating fish when it seemed to form a staple part of the Aboriginal diet. But we learned that fish which live in small waterholes are believed to be the spirit of the dead which are eaten by married women of childbearing age and reborn into children. Therefore young, unmarried girls eating fish was tantamount to consuming a spirit or soul and condemning it to a situation in which it could not be properly reborn.

Our visit to Kakadu wasn’t quite over yet. We hopped aboard a flatbed boat at Coroborree Billabong, eager to see fantastic birdlife and huge crocs up close and personal. Since it takes only seconds for crocodiles to kill their prey we safely kept our arms and bodies inside the boat. We were surrounded by tens of crocodiles on shore and many below the water’s surface which we couldn’t see. It struck me as kind of odd that this boat was required to carry life jackets.

Crocodiles need to keep their core body temperature within a several degree range. Many of the crocodiles were warming up by sunning themselves on shore. Several of them had their mouths wide open in order to cool down. Crocodiles also have detailed hunting rules. For each species of potential pray, the croc calculates an invisible circle whose radius depends on how easy the prey is to catch and how much energy the croc has to invest. If the prey crosses into the strike zone it’s likely to be a goner. But we saw many wading birds apparently outside the strike zone – the nearby crocs were happy to let them walk right past. Crocodiles’ social system is complex as well – males stake out their territory and challenge other males from time to time. They can sustain massive injuries from these fights, which often leave internal organs hanging outside their bodies. The wounded males sit on the shore and wait for their skin to grow and close up the gash while the organ regenerates.

The birdlife at Coroborree Billabong was as equally as impressive as the crocs. A family of eagles was perched in a tree. We watched the parents teaching the fledglings how to fly and catch their own food. It was striking to see jabirus, the largest stork species, with long black necks, dark blue bodies, and bright red legs. Wading alongside the jabirus were the world’s smallest stork species with white and grey plumage. We also crossed paths with a wayward male duck, whose mate we suspected had been eaten by a croc. Since this species of duck mates for life and does everything with its partner as a team, he would soon die of stress, malnutrition, and a broken heart.

There was no final ceremony to mark the end of our trip, unlike the beginning. But as we drove towards the city of Darwin, each of us quietly knew that something special had come to a close. After five days of traversing Kakadu’s rivers, waterfalls, and escarpments we had mixed more than just our sweat with the land. We had heard Kakadu’s birdlife calling, seen the roaring waterfalls, and felt the presence of generations of Aboriginal people who are stewards of this land. Now that I had glimpsed Kakadu’s soul first-hand, I was even more enthralled by its power, beauty, and the teachings it holds. Listen closely, Kakadu is calling.

Note: Name changed for anonimity.