Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia

Kakadu, Crocodile Dundee’s home, Is one of earth’s great wonders

On August 5, 1999, 37 years to the day after Marilyn Monroe committed suicide, 44-year-old Rodney Ansell fired upon a police officer on a highway outside the Australian city of Darwin. The mortally wounded cop’s partner fired back and killed Ansell.

Ansell’s death was both a mystery and a shock to Australians. For the barefoot bushman was the real-life person upon whom actor Paul Hogan built his successful Crocodile Dundee movie character. Ansell was authentic, a tough man who first impinged on the national consciousness after recounting the story of his 1977 shipwreck on a deserted coastal island. Ansell survived by eating sharks and wild buffalo he was able to trap or shoot. Lacking dependable fresh water, at times he drank the buffalos’ blood to survive.

On a subsequent book tour to Sydney, Ansell amused locals with his insistence on sleeping in a bushman’s bed roll at a five-star hotel and his mystification at the function of a bidet. His fish-out-of-water persona showed up later in Hogan’s 1986 Crocodile Dundee as a charming master of the Outback who was totally befuddled by Manhattan.

Ansell’s fortunes changed after his time in the limelight. By the early ‘90s, he had lost his ranch and holdings, and had become increasingly embittered. He was convinced that the government in Northern Territory was deliberately trying to impoverish him. On the day he died, police were pursuing him as the suspect in a gunfight where a man had had a finger shot off. Knowing Ansell’s erratic behavior, they had set up a roadblock 30 miles outside of Darwin to stop him. Just as they were dismantling it, Ansell fired on them.

Experienced bushmen say that had he chosen, Ansell could have easily eluded capture for years. That he chose to place himself in mortal danger, they speculate, is a sign that he had decided life was no longer worth living.

Where Ansell had been happiest and had made his reputation was in a vast tropical tract called Kakadu, a wilderness region near Darwin that stretches from the northern shore of Australia inland 60 miles, and east to west a similar distance. At 5,000 square miles (12,000 sq. km.), it is Australia’s largest national park. Flanked on the east by a huge aboriginal preserve called Arnhem Land, Kakadu has some of the greatest variety of landscapes in all of Australia, and wildlife that rivals Yellowstone Park in its abundance.

The park begins with mangrove swamps on the shore of Van Diemen Gulf, then climbs to an ancient sandstone and limestone escarpment, the heart of the park. Further south, as the terrain approaches Katherine Gorge, one of Australia’s deepest defiles, Kakadu’s own cliffs and gorges rise 100 meters or more, impressive heights on this, the flattest and most eroded of earth’s continents.

Like Yellowstone, Kakadu has no one superlative feature that fixes it in people’s minds. For everybody who thinks of Old Faithful geyser, there is another who thinks of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and its great falls, or the 136-square mile expanse of Yellowstone Lake. Mention Kakadu and some think of its 15-foot-high termite mounds and dense tracts of tropical forest. Others note the huge number of freshwater crocodiles and amphibians (75 species of reptiles, 25 species of frogs) – or the 30 species of mammals, 50 species of fish, 1,000 species of plants and the 1,500 species of butterflies and moths.

Then there are the seasonal waterfalls and streams that feed three sizeable rivers, and aboriginal art that dates back thousands of years. (Humans have lived at Kakadu for at least 25,000 years, and some scientists say they may even have been there twice that long.) Still others think of the abandoned old uranium mines or the park’s rutted dirt “roads,” long tracks that are dusty furrows in “the dry” and muddy quagmires in “the wet.”

Like stretches of the African veldt, the park has a distinct dry-wet cycle. In the summer (December through March) monsoon season, the land is drenched. Waterfalls with sweet aboriginal names like Jim Jim and Gunlom leap down the sides of sandstone gorges, sending their volleys of water into Kakadu’s thirsty floodplains. The suddenly saturated land, flooded in many places, becomes a haven for waterfowl. Crocodiles feast on the abundant bird life and kangaroos enjoy the green forage that bursts into bloom.

In the dry season (April through November), Kakadu dries out and begins to more resemble the desiccated red landscapes most people imagine when thinking about Australia. But the region’s tropical latitude means that its overlay of vegetation, including the trees and bushes that wedge themselves everywhere in the park’s sandstone cracks, hang in there, providing a green counterpoint to the parched rocks.

Kakadu is one of the few World Heritage sites that combines both a natural and a cultural element. Because of the ancient aboriginal presence here, and the existence of many aboriginal religious and cultural sites throughout Kakadu, the Australian government has given aborigines considerable say in the park’s administration and maintenance. This is a place where a traveler looking for insights into the oldest culture on earth will find them in abundance.

He’ll also find that Kakadu requires a bit of grit and effort. Whether it is wet or dry, the park and its great distances require a bit of patience and willingness to forego five, four, three or two-star amenities. The reward, of course, is a few day’s existence on one of earth’s primeval landscapes, under a canopy of stars so bright it’s a humbling reminder of how beautiful the night sky can be. Throw in a 2-billion-year-old landscape, some tenacious crocs and the soul-soothing quiet of a wild place, and you’ve got yourself a fair dinkum slice of life.– Patrick Totty