Australian National Parks – Reading the Road

Kakadu National Park is vast – any way you think about it. Located at the Top End, it is Australia’s largest terrestrial national park and home to a whopping 30% of Australian bird life.

Something of the grandeur and gravitas of this place begins to make sense when James, a young Bininj man, budding lawyer and Park Ranger, guiding us around the rock art at Burrungkuy, relates a conversation with his uncle, who is one of the traditional owners of this part of Kakadu.

James to his uncle: ‘some people say there have been humans here 60,000 years. What do you think’. Uncle says: ‘Our ancestors have been here for ever!’ 60,000, infinity, what’s the difference, anyway? James concludes.

Iconic but not necessarily ancient, Anbangang rock art gallery, Burrungkuy

Kakadu is one of just four places in Australia (and just 38 in the world) that the United Nations lists as ‘world heritage site’ under both natural and cultural categories.

We are here in the last week of August, when Wurrkeng (the coolest season) is giving way to the start Kurrung – in mainstream ‘Aussie’, it’s almost spring. About 200,000 tourists visit Kakadu each year – not a great number considering the vastness of the park – nearly 20,000 sq kms. So, even in high tourist season, even on the main road that takes you into Jabiru township, from the gates of the park and back out to Highway 1 at Pine Creek – a total drive of 230 kms+ – you are likely to see more animals than cars, especially in the early morning, including some non-natives, like feral pigs, but plenty of natives too and birds who might just be passing through.

Birds at dawn, Mamaluka Wetlands

Getting to the sublime via the ridiculous

Kakadu might feel remote. But it is just 150 Kms from Darwin to the gates of the national park. And another 100 kms or so will bring you to the little settlement of Jabiru with various accommodation options, or Cooinda with slightly more expensive options.

Darwin has excellent fast chargers. Just south-east of Darwin, Palmerston is your last fast charger until you get back to Katherine. This means minimally 540 kms, plus the driving inside Kakadu park. All this calculation is bringing on an attack of range anxiety for Co-Pilot – so we stop to top up at Palmerston. Unnecessary.

And talking about the ridiculous, at Humpty Doo, you cannot miss the world’s only boxing crocodile.

Humpty Doo petrol station, just as useful to us as its boxing croc

There are AC chargers available both at Jabiru and Cooinda. So there is no real cause for range or charger anxiety. You can charge your car overnight if you are happy to pay for a powered caravan site or you can charge on a 3 phase plug at an hourly rate of $10 at Aurora Kakadu Lodge.

Where in Kakadu

Unless you spend your lifetime here, or fly over it for a bird’s eye view, you are never going to see most of Kakadu. Criss-crossed with rivers and marshes, much of the park is not passable by any terrestrial vehicle most of us would drive.

We decided, even before setting off from Perth, to put some limits on this road trip. We go only where the road can take us – and that too is limited by the capacities of a 2 wheel drive.

But our stars are in alignment in Kakadu. Just in the two-and-half days we have here, Co-Pilot finds three marvellous tours with indigenous guides, of rock art sites and a crocodile habitat.

Crocodiles at Cahill’s Crossing

But Jim Jim, the famously high plunge-waterfall is beyond our reach – 60 kms on gravel roads marked 4WD only. I feel like I am missing out on something really important, I say to our guide James, who is clearly wise beyond his years. He says: ‘Ah, you can miss out on Jim Jim for ever. It is just a trickle now – if you get there, it might disappoint. Come back in rainy season and it’s a 200 metre high wall of water. Blows your mind. Then again, the road there might be washed out! But you are enjoying now, yes?’

Let me see: breakfast with the birds at Mamaluka, fishing with crocodiles at high tide at Cahill’s Crossing, two open air galleries of rock art, old, new, undated, by artists named and unknown. And we finish up at Ubirr with sunset on the rocks. Yes, thanks. Enjoying – now!

Joffre Gorge at sunset, from the Eco Retreat side

In 2015, a headline in Conde Nast, perhaps the trendiest of travel magazines, said ‘Electric Car Road Trips are the next big thing’. Ten years later, here in outback Western Australia, my fellow grey nomads still look quizical or dismissive, at best curious, when you join a conversation about cars, costs and distances – what else would you talk about on these open roads?

Watching your first sunset with a bunch of other tourists at Joffre Gorge, just 5 minutes walk from your glamping tent, you are just grateful to have this view.

All the way from Cheela Plains I have had a Bangla folk song buzzing in my head:

গ্রামছাড়া ওই রাঙা মাটির পথ আমার মন ভুলায় রে। That red earth path out of the village is making me forget myself, says the refrain.

A dingo welcomes us soon after we turn into Karijini Drive.

If you are driving an EV, you are most likely to enter Karijini from the western side having fully charged up at Tom Price. Your first look out, Mount Sheila, its table-flat top, surrounded by memorial stones, invites a contemplative silence. Makes you appreciate the silence of your car, without an engine that roars or heats up!

Mount Shiela Lookout, soon after you turn into Karijini Drive

If like us, you have booked at Karijini Eco Retreat, back your car into the driveway of your glamping tent and enjoy your expansive back-yard all the way to the horizon.

It is hard not to gush when you talk about Karijini. Even its name is sweet on your tongue, as if belonging to some fairy-tale princess in an exotic land. Use a little imagination (we grown-ups like to call it planning) and just like that fairy tale, Karijini will let you into her magic.

Fully charged up at Tom Price, incidentally at 747 metres elevation, the ‘top town’ in Western Australia, we rolled along 80 kms of beautifully sealed, mostly flat roads, into the National Park, with more than 300 kms still in the tank.

With one exception (Hamersley), the gorges and pools that draw visitors to Karijini are within 50 kilometres of our accommodation. So, there is plenty of range to take in all the main attractions.

You park on the top of the gorges, then walk to the look-out. Or if you are like me, you will want to walk down the marked and graded trails, into the waterways below. ‘Whatever else you do, do NOT miss the Fern Pool’ says a lovely attendant at the Karijini Visitor’s Centre.

Fern Pool, Karijini, not a Hollywood set!

The only problem is, every one of the gorges is mesmerising. Even the carparks provide photo opportunities, like anthills as large as our car and taller than basketball players, and tiny Spinifex Pigeons which won’t stay still for a photo!

Spinifex Pigeon male showing off at the top of Dales Gorge

And then there are the walks, the edgiest down into Weano, which goes from level 4 to level 5 as you scramble and wade and when necessary swim and eventually squeeze between rock walls to the red stone and grey-green waters at the bottom.

You’ve got to be there to know how good that feels!

Final entry to the pool, just wide enough to squeeze through

And before you know it, your three days are gone. And you realise that Hamersley Gorge will take more time and planning.

Having gone to most of the places that any car may go (and beyond where only feet will do) in Karijni National Park, we returned to Tom Price with more than 20 percent still in the battery. With better planning or less time spent taking photos, it might have been possble to get to Hamersley Gorge – the road is partly unsealed but accessible without 4WD in most seasons. But after two full days and three starry nights at Karijini, we are booked into Exmouth, the gateway to yet another famed West Australian National Park.

Sadly, an EV cannot help with time management🙄

Tag: Australian National Parks

Kakadu Road-trip by EV: sensing grandeur, navigating limits

Inside Karijini: a perfect drive through an ancient land