80 Australian Geographic
A
S I SIP ON MY morning cof ee and
pore over the day’s headlines,
a menacing photograph grabs
my eye. A large saltwater croc is
lunging from the cover of the NT
News. Its enormous mouth is open
wide, revealing sharp teeth that hint at the crush-
ing power of mighty jaws. Alongside the image, the
Darwin-based newspaper’s cover line reads: “Kids use
live dogs for croc bait”. I suddenly feel a bit sick. I’m
about to embark on a three-day kayaking trip down
the Katherine River: was this a sensible decision?
Under normal circumstances, such an image
would send me packing. Instead, I rationalise that
the Katherine is a freshwater river so there won’t be
any salties lurking in its depths. Right? I tell myself
this again, later in the morning, as I board a coach
headed for a popular kayaking spot on the outskirts
of Katherine township, about 320km south-east
of Darwin.
Three and a half hours later, after a drive through
the lush savannah woodlands of the Top End, I’m
met by tour guide Collin Jerram. Clad in shorts and
a shirt that match the colour of the outback dirt, and
with thick tufts of white hair poking out from under
his Akubra, Collin seems very much at ease in his
environment. In fact, he looks like a man who couldrun from Darwin to Alice Springs without breaking a
sweat. He has a warm smile, a fi rm handshake and he
speaks openly. I am compelled to ask him the question
that had been eating away at me during the long bus
journey. “There are no saltwater crocodiles in the
Katherine River, are there?” I inquire, nervously. “Oh,
yes,” Collin says brightly, breaking into a broad smile.
“My word, there’ll be plenty of salties in the river!”I
STAND BESIDE the faded ocean kayaks that will
be our life rafts for the next three days. At their
bows, just above what looks to be a series of
scratches left by crocodile claws, are their names:
BamBam, Melon, Bom Shiva and Tree Hugger. “Tree
Hugger. That’ll be my ticket,” I say, looking around
at the other three members of my group: Nat Brad-
ford, a publicist from Adelaide; Dave Cauldwell, a
journalist from Melbourne; and Jesse Trushenski,
a fi sheries and aquaculture professor from the US
state of Illinois. Our kayaking guide Matt Leigh runsthrough the protocol we’ll need to follow for the next
three days as we journey 50km along the Katherine
River. Most visitors to the region travel the river in
Katherine Gorge, in Nitmiluk National Park, but our
tour heads in the opposite direction, downriver, for a
quieter, more isolated paddle. We launch from Man-
bulloo homestead, 13km west of Katherine township.
The Katherine River is a mighty 328km stretch of
fresh water that runs south-west from Nitmiluk NP,
through Katherine – where some 10,000 residents
tap its water – to merge with the Flora River, at the
eastern tip of Flora River Nature Park. The two rivers
form a major tributary of the Daly River, whose sys-
tem is the longest in the NT and is kilometres wide
when it reaches the sea south-west of Darwin. During
the dry season (May–October), the Katherine River
is spring fed by the Tindall limestone aquifer in the
Katherine region and the Oolloo Dolostone aquifer of
the Daly River basin. During the wet season (Novem-
ber–April) monsoon rains fi ll the river and supply
the aquifers.
This whole area is the Jawoyn’s beat; they are
the custodians of the Katherine region. Their tra-
ditional lands, which sprawl across about 50,000sq.
km, include Nitmiluk NP, southern parts of Kakadu
NP and western Arnhem Land. In 1978 the Jawoyn
people lodged a claim under the Aboriginal Land Rights(NT) Act 1976 over lands including Katherine Gorge
National Park (proclaimed in 1962), but it wasn’t
until 1989 that ownership of Nitmiluk was returned
to the elders. The Jawoyn Association Aboriginal
Corporation was established in 1985 as the repre-
sentative body for the traditional owners and jointly
manages Nitmiluk NP with the NT government.
The Jawoyn have lived with the river for some
70,000 years. They recognise two distinct social
groupings, or moieties – Duwa (or Dhuwa, Dua)
and Yirritja – which were created during the Buwurr
(Burr), or Dreaming. Each of the two groups is
divided into four skin groups and every person, ani-
mal, plant and place belongs to one of the two groups.
Moiety is an important part of Jawoyn, balancing the
natural and cultural worlds.
Balance can be thought of as the act of weighing
factors, one against the other. And indeed, as I cast of
from the bank of the Katherine River, I’m weighing
up whether to abandon the kayakI rationalise that the Katherine is a freshwater river
so there won’t be any salties lurking in its depths.
Continued page 84