History of Kakadu

• 60000 BC first people come to Australia via what is known today as Indonesia.
• 35000 BC first rock paintings – simple hand prints
• 20000 BC rock paintings depicting large naturalistic figures.
• 18000 BC edge ground stone axe worlds first technology
• 10000 BC Rainbow Serpent Ngalyod first appears in rock paintings. Still painted and revered today making it the oldest religious icon of mankind. Man first moves into villages and practices agriculture (in the middle east)
• 7000 BC X ray paintings first appear in Kakadu
• 5000 BC Egyptians build first Pyramids
• 1500 BC Freshwater floodplains form in Kakadu
• 0 Birth of Jesus of Nazareth
• 1600AD Macassan mariners seasonally visit Top End shores till 1904. First boat people
• 1644 Tasman mapped part of Australia’s northern coast
• 1788 White man arrives to settle in Australia – the First Fleet
• 1803 Capt M. Flinders passed through on first circumnavigation of Australia
• 1818 Navigator PP King named the three Alligator Rivers before sailing onto Timor
• 1824 Capt J. Bremer claims Kakadu for the British Crown
• 1828 First water buffalo shipped from Indonesia to Coburg Peninsula NT
• 1830 First rock art featuring sailing vessels.
• 1838 Military settlement established at Pt Essington NT
• 1845 L. Leichardt crosses Kakadu.
• 1869 Darwin established
• 1880’s Pine Creek Goldrush, First record of Gagadju people visiting Darwin. Commercial buffalo shooting begins. Paddy Cahill first visits region.
• 1906 P Cahill takes up residence at Oenpelli.
• 1907 American / Australian Scientific Expedition – Baldwin Spencer visits area and calls the people Gagadju.
• 1919 Influenza pandemic claims 25 – 50% of Aboriginal people Australia wide.
• 1931 Arnhem Land declared an Aboriginal reserve.
• 1942 Many Gagadju people removed from their land by the army
• 1964 Nadjomboli paints last major rock painting at Burrunguy, Kakadu
• 1977 Fox Enquirey report recommends 1) Kakadu National Park be established and 2) Uranium mining go ahead
• 1978 Kakadu National Park declared
• 2003 Jabiluka mine stopped. Veto with the traditional landowners – Mirrar clan.