Kakadu National Park

Site Information

Official Name: Kakadu National Park

Location: Northern Territory, Australia

Type: Natural, Cultural

Encompassing nearly 20,000 square kilometres, Kakadu National Park is a large ecological preserve located 240 kilometres east of Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. It was established in three stages, beginning in 1979, and was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981. The park, which has been occupied by Aboriginal Australians for more than fifty thousand years, is considered a living cultural landscape whose residents continue to hunt, fish and live off the land. It is also a major biological preserve, one of the largest national parks in the Tropics and the largest national park in Australia, with 208,056 visitors in 2022.

History

The arrival of British prisoners and colonists at New South Wales in the late eighteenth century had a profound impact on the hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal Australians who had lived in Australia at least as far back as the last ice age, more than fifty thousand years ago. This situation was repeated in 1824, when the northern Australian coast was proclaimed a British possession and settlers began arriving in the Northern Territory. Thousands of Aboriginal people were displaced and forced to work for the British in mines and farms throughout the nineteenth century. At the turn of the twentieth century, the newly federated Australian government established, through the Northern Territory Aboriginals Act 1910, the position of chief protector. This individual would act as legal guardian of all Indigenous children in the Northern Territory, giving the chief protector power to send them to institutions where they would be separated from their families and people and where they were often abused.

Segregation and attempts at assimilating Aboriginal Australians into white culture, partly through removing Aboriginal children from their parents and placing them in residential schools, continued through the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. Aboriginal people were forced to live in reserves, which were small villages and camps near farms and towns, to ensure that they were part of the workforce. Two such reserves were the Arnhem and Woolwonga Reserves, located along the northern coast of the Northern Territory. The policy of assimilation, however, was abolished in 1973, replaced by a system of Aboriginal self-management.

Meanwhile, in the 1960s, interest was building for the establishment of a national parks system across the Commonwealth. In the Northern Territory, Woolwonga tribal land was recognised as a wildlife sanctuary, as was the area around the Alligator Rivers. In 1977, the federal government accepted a set of recommendations that a larger, national park should be established in three stages (taking into account uranium mining operations and tribal land ownership issues) in this same region. The first stage of what would become known as Kakadu National Park was complete in 1979, the second in 1984 and the third in 1987. In 1981, after the first stage was complete, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added Kakadu to its World Heritage List.

Significance

As a natural preserve, Kakadu (the name of which is derived from a European interpretation of "Gagudju", a local Aboriginal language), is a vast array of different ecosystems, including coastlines, estuaries, savannah woodlands, billabongs, floodplains and monsoon forests. Each of these systems is minimally affected by the development of the twenty-first century, allowing for local wildlife to live and grow in as pristine an environment as possible. At over 20,000 kilometres, nearly half the size of Switzerland, Kakadu boasts myriad flora and fauna. For example, over two thousand distinct species of plants have been recorded within the park's borders. Among these species is speargrass, which grows as tall as three metres, and the Darwin Woollybutt, a tree that Aboriginal Australians have for millennia used as a calendar of sorts due to its seasonal changes in appearance.

Kakadu is also the home to countless forms of animal life, many of which are rare, endangered or endemic (specific to the region). Eight kinds of kangaroo are found in the park, along with dingoes, wallaroos, and about a third of the different species of bat native to Australia. More than 280 different species of birds also live in Kakadu, along with 117 species of reptiles, including freshwater and saltwater crocodiles.

One of the unique distinguishing features of Kakadu is its status as a living cultural preserve as well as a nature preserve. The park has a number of escarpments and caves adorned with Aboriginal art. Some of this artwork and archaeological evidence dates as far back as the Ice Age.

Another distinctive feature of Kakadu National Park is the fact that local Aboriginal people, who act as the park's official owners, still use the park to hunt and fish, just as their ancestors did. Although most local Aboriginal people live in towns adjacent to the park, some still dwell in villages and camps within the park itself. Park visitors are not allowed to enter these areas.

Kakadu is considered Aboriginal land. Half of the park is owned under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. The other half of the park property is under claim by Aboriginal individuals. The park's management is conducted jointly between Aboriginal traditional owners and Parks Australia, which leases the property in order to maintain and protect it.

Kakadu National Park is an internationally renowned destination for tourists and avid outdoors enthusiasts. While the number of visitors dropped from 195,693 in 2019 to 113,279 in 2020, the number had risen to 208,056 in 2022.

Bibliography

Billias, Maria. "Visitor Numbers Down at Kakadu National Park." NT News, 10 June 2016, www.ntnews.com.au/news/northern-territory/visitor-numbers-down-at-kakadu-national-park/news-story/0b0842b50323a43d9c693316cb4cd7f8?nk=370d36e3301588269d40a59a0aefbe63-1487170835. Accessed 12 June 2024.

"The History—Northern Territory." Bringing Them Home, Australian Human Rights Commission, 2010, www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-home-8-history-northern-territory. Accessed 12 June 2024.

"Kakadu National Park." Parks Australia, Australian Government, parksaustralia.gov.au/kakadu. Accessed 12 June 2024.

"Kakadu National Park." United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, whc.unesco.org/en/list/147. Accessed 12 June 2024.

"Living on Aboriginal Reserves and Stations." NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, NSW Government, 9 Nov. 2012, www.environment.nsw.gov.au/chresearch/ReserveStation.htm. Accessed 12 June 2024.

"Welcome to Kakadu National Park." Department of the Environment and Energy, Australian Government, www.environment.gov.au/topics/national-parks/kakadu-national-park. Accessed 12 June 2024.