True North

Back to nature

It can be hard to soak up the serenity or to let your jaw fall in awe when you’ve got a thumping great V8 just behind your shoulders, roaring so stridently that it’s still loud through industrial ear muffs. 

You wouldn’t rate your chances of sneaking up on the wildlife in Kakadu National Park’s vast, ageless wetlands while skimming over them in an airboat (a simple yet spectacular mode of transport that’s basically a big engine attached to an even bigger fan) but then some of the wild things up here aren’t scared of loud noises, or anything else.

Sure enough we virtually run over the tail of a barrel-stomached, four-metre saltwater crocodile, which reacts by whipping itself into the air – looking for all the world like the reptilian star of Peter Pan – snapping its jaws impressively and glaring at us with its cold, glassy black eyes before paddling down the side of our vessel. It really was close enough to reach out and touch, briefly, but only if you weren’t particularly attached to the limb in question.

Our grinning guide killed the boat’s giant motor at that point, perhaps to try and bring our beating hearts back to normal with a dose of green grandeur, beauty and silence. Mouths open and phone cameras clicking, we floated through lotus lily pad fields as big as city suburbs and were surrounded by just a few dozen of the 230 species of birds you can see in the Northern Territory. 

Sure, the rest of Australia has some wildly colourful and impressive birds, but much like everything else, they’re all a lot bigger up here, and they thrive in Kakadu, the largest terrestrial park in Australia, where you constantly feel like you’re just a soothing soundtrack away from being in a David Attenborough doco. 

The airboat is an incredible way of seeing these wondrous water ways, because it can go where no other vehicle could, skimming over just a few puddles and some mud and grass, and keeping you low enough to the scenery that you feel like a part of it. Particularly when you encounter something that could snap you in two like a slightly boney sausage.

Serious wildlife

Our chances of scaring up a crocodile on our tour were fairly high, of course (we ended up spotting another three), because there really are even more of them than you’d imagine, or fear. 

The Northern Territory may be only sparsely sprinkled with people – just 243,000 of them in an area of 1.4 million square kilometres –  but it’s got more crocodiles per square metre than anywhere on the planet, and most of them are in the very Top End. Estimates range from 110,000 to 200,000, and they only count the big ones (at least two metres in length). 

On average there are five crocs for every kilometre of river in the NT,  but a more exact – and no doubt  invigorating – census has been taken of the Mary River where that number jumps to 15 per kilometre. 

We drove to this river along a road just like the gravel tracks you get in  the rest of the country, only covered in half a metre of ochrered dust, which seems to have the ability to turn into thick, red fog when the car in front of you drives over it.

Despite the zero visibility, and the occasional surprise corner, both the A4 and A6 versions of the new Audi allroad quattro we were here to drive  – the perfect car for people who want more than an Avant, but less than an SUV – coped with the off-roading ordeal with ease. 

It was with some trepidation that we hopped out to walk to the edge of the most crocodile-crammed waterway in the world, with an estimated 1,300 salties living cheek by toothy jowl along its Jurassic-looking length. Sure enough, our guide’s colourful retelling of the eviscerating ways in which crocs have previously dispatched humans was much enlivened by the sight of several huge beasts cruising the Mary River behind him.

Driven to extremes

One of the particular challenges of living in the far north, particularly in summer when temperatures regularly crest 45 degrees and 100 percent humidity squats on your forehead, is that no matter how overheated you are, you can never go for a swim. 

The locals call this hottest part of the year ‘Mango Madness’, because it’s the time when the weather drives people completely bonkers, to the point where even a gorey-death-filled river looks tempting. 

If we’d been here at that time, of course, even the highly capable Audi allroads we were driving would have struggled to get us around. When the Big Wet comes, the dust is doused, sand banked gravel roads become rivers, and even the land around our amazing accommodation, the Wildman Wilderness Lodge, can feature enough water to attract crocodiles to its front yard.

In winter, however, when the temperature seems to be an unshifting 33 degrees during the day, and a pleasant 20 at night, the Wilderness Lodge is a breathtaking place to stay. Surrounded by kangaroos and other wildlife, you stay in either giant glamping structures or beautiful timber cabins, which face the most outrageous sunsets you’ve ever seen, every evening.

They also do a fantastic barramundi for dinner, obviously, and the only challenge is that you will see mosquitos so large that they cast shadows, and drown out conversations. It’s better to sit inside at night.

Driving up north

The Wildman is in the Mary River Wetlands, halfway between Darwin and Kakadu, which means it’s smack-bang in the middle of some majestic driving roads. An unexpectedly wonderful part of the experience is that large parts of the roadside seem to catch fire quite regularly (no one seems to panic, or to put them out), which causes small animals to flee, which in turn draws literally dozens of giant wedge-tailed eagles, who circle the bright orange flames and black eucalyptus-smelling smoke like something from Tolkien. 

The wedgies are something you need to watch out for when whistling along at the NT’s very special speed limit of 130km/h, because they snack on the roadkill, and they’re so big they take a while to lift off. 

Yes, 130km/h, although most people sit on 160km/h. The people up here have worked out that, if you’re driving long distances, it’s better to get there a bit sooner, rather than fall asleep at the wheel – or risk driving at night, which can be roo-full up there. Which is why the whole Territory used to have no highway speed limits at all for many years, and is trialling a return to those laws.

Not surprisingly, the autobahn-bred A4 and A6 allroad quattros cope with the high-speed cruising – and the particular challenge that is overtaking road trains with six or more trailers behind them – with quiet aplomb.