At Yellow Water at first light, I stretch in the cool of pandanus palms, resting my gaze on an enormous crocodile lazing a safe distance below on the billabong’s edge. It’s Gurrung season in Kakadu National Park, the hot, dry pause between winter and the wet, when ever-shrinking wetlands bring the north’s abundant wildlife into clear view.
As glossy jabirus line up alongside elegant egrets patrolling the shallows, great flocks of magpie geese circle overhead and, beyond, on distant floodplains, brolgas, brumbies and buffalo graze. This wondrous scene pulls at my attention, which eventually returns to that solitary saltie on the mudflats, waiting patiently for the sun.
Startling me with kaleidoscopic natural scenes, Kakadu’s 20,000 square kilometres of sandstone escarpments, swamps, savannah woodlands and wetlands support a stunning diversity of…
