The gloriously empty Top End of Australia’s Northern Territory, home to giant crocs and the pub crawl by helicopter
Nearer Jakarta than Sydney, Darwin, with its laid back vibe, is a great starting point to explore a huge area where hardly any humans, but plenty of crocodiles and other exotic fauna, live – such as Danish bush bar owner King Kai
“There are two or three tonnes of pressure in those jaws as they come together. They’re designed to smash your bones, to rip you apart.”
Peter “Saltie” Saltmarsh has seen it all over the years, so doesn’t mince his words when it comes to describing the awesome, and terrifying, power of crocodiles in the wild. The softly spoken 50-something, a resident naturalist at Wildman Wilderness Lodge, is a passionate advocate of an animal that has helped put Australia’s Northern Territory on the map.
Two hours east of the territory’s capital, Darwin, the lodge lives up to its name. But in the NT – as the Northern Territory prefers to be known – that’s not difficult. Measuring 1.3 million square kilometres (think Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia combined) but with just a quarter of a million people, barely 1 per cent of Australia’s total, it’s very, very easy to find your own space. By way of a mind-blowing comparison, the population in just 2.6 square kilometres of Hong Kong’s Mong Kok district easily beats that of the entire NT.
Indigenous Australians including the Larrakia, Kunwinjku and Arrernte lived in the area for 40,000 years before colonisation and still make up a third of the territory’s population. They now legally own about half of the NT.
