Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park is Australia's national park 171 kilometers east of Darwin. The park was founded in 1981 and is Australia's largest park - its area is 19,804 km2. The natural border of the park is formidable, steep cliffs up to 500 meters high. They bordered the park, protecting it from storms. Park « Kakadu » is a unique archaeological, natural and ethnological treasury of a mysterious mainland. The name of the park was obtained from the incorrect pronunciation by Europeans of the name of the language of the Aboriginal tribe – Gagaju.
Kakadu Park – is a unique archaeological, natural and ethnological reserve. In this area there are two of the most famous caves with rock paintings by Aboriginal people. The samples stored here are considered the best in Australia and one of the best in the world. The first traces of a person found in this part of Australia indicate that he appeared here more than 50,000 years ago. Aboriginal cave paintings and letters, archaeological and paleontological excavations give a more complete concept of the life of local residents of different times – from prehistoric hunter-gatherers to modern people. The age of the surviving most ancient cave paintings reaches 18,000 years. The most common and unusual feature of the cave paintings of Aboriginal people of the National Park of Kakadu is the so-called « x-ray » style. In the drawings, not only the outer appearance of people and animals is transmitted, but also their internal organs.
Kakadu is a beautiful, green, rich corner of the Earth, like all other parks in Australia. In total, there are more than 1700 plant species. Although the forests of Kakadu National Park look as if they had never been stepped on a person’s foot, this is not true. Such a rich and diverse natural world of Kakadu Park is primarily due to the diversity of habitats: in the park you can find zones of swamps and dense forests, full-water rivers and open solar glades. According to legend, « the first people » appeared in Kakada back in « time of dreams » or during the creation of the world, when our ancestors came out of the earth’s bowels, who, having thrown around the world, plunged into the rocks, leaving only his prints on the surface. Aborigines are confident that their ancestors still live in the southern part of the park, called « the country of disease », and therefore warn tourists to step carefully and not wake the sleeping gods.
In the Kakadu National Park, you can see many unique creatures. There are 280 species of birds, 60 species of mammals, and 117 species of reptiles and about 80 species of freshwater fish live in the basins of the Naorlanga Creek and Majela Creek rivers. From this list of living things, you can easily meet representatives of the wild as a placed lizard, tree frog, octopus, scorpion, an unusual bright red and yellow color locust, ram, buffalo, boar, kangaroo. Two large rivers – Noarlanga Creek and Majela Creek flow through the Park. Both freshwater crocodiles safe for humans and huge sea combed crocodiles swim in them, terrifying all the inhabitants and visitors of the park, and the legendary fish of Australia – barramundi. This is one of the two-breathing fish. The length of this fish can reach 2 meters. In the south of the Park in the Woolwong Swamps, an extensive wetland is teeming with swamp and waterfowl, insects and reptiles. Another attraction of the park is the Nomad Cascade, which is a truly breathtaking sight.
