Stage Two was declared on 28 February 1984. In March 1978, a claim was lodged under the Land Rights Act for the land included in Stage Two of Kakadu. The land claim was partly successful. In 1986, three areas in the eastern part of Stage Two were given to the Jabiluka Aboriginal Land Trust. A lease between the Land Trust and the Director of National parks was signed in March 1991.
In 1987, a land claim was made for the land in the Goodparla and Gimbat pastoral leases that were to be included in Stage Three of Kakadu. The other area to be included in Stage Three, the Gimbat Resumption and the Waterfall Creek Reserve, were later added to this land claim. The need to create the park in stages was due to the debate over whether mining should be allowed at Guratba (Coronation Hill) which is located in the middle of the area referred to as Sickness Country. The traditional owners’ wishes were ultimately respected and the Australian National Government decided that there would be no mining at Guratba.
In 1996, the land in Stage Three, apart from the former Goodparla pastoral leases, was given to the Gunlom Aboriginal Land Trust and leased to the Director of National Parks to continue being managed as part of Kakadu.
The Chinese, Malays and Portuguese all claim to have been the first non-Aboriginal explorers of Australia’s north coast. The first surviving written account comes from the Dutch. In 1623 Jan Carstenz made his way west across the Gulf of Carpentaria to what is believed to be Groote Eylandt. Abel Tasman was the next explorer to visit in 1644. He was the first person to record European contact with Aboriginal people. Almost a century later Matthew Flinders surveyed the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1802 and 1803.
Phillip Parker King, an English navigator entered the Gulf of Carpentaria between 1818 and 1822. During this time he named the three Alligator Rivers after the large numbers of crocodiles, which he thought were alligators.
Ludwig Leichhardt was the first land-based European explorer to visit the Kakadu region, in 1845 on his way from Moreton Bay in Queensland to Port Essington in the Northern Territory. He followed Jim Jim Creek down from the Arnhem Land escarpment, then went down the South Alligator before crossing to the East Alligator and going north.
In 1862 John McDouall Stuart travelled along the south-western boundary of Kakadu but did not see any people.
The first non-Aboriginal people to visit and have long term contact with Aboriginal people in northern Australia were the Macassans from Sulawesi and other parts of Indonesia. They travelled to northern Australia every wet season, probably from the last quarter of the 17th century, in sailing boats called praus. They came to harvest trepang (sea cucumber), turtle shell, pearls and other prized items to trade in their homeland. Aboriginal people helped in harvesting and processing the trepang, and in collecting and exchanging the other goods.
There is no evidence that the Macassans spent time on the coast of Kakadu. There is evidence of some contact between Macassan culture and Aboriginal people of the Kakadu area. Among the finds from archaeological digs in the Park are glass and metal pieces that probably came from the Macassans, either directly or through trade with the Coburg Peninsula people.
The British attempted a number of settlements on the northern Australian coast in the
early part of the 19th century: Fort Dundas on Melville Island in 1824; Fort Wellington at Raffles Bay in 1829; and Victoria Settlement (Port Essington) on the Coburg Peninsula in 1838. They wanted to secure the north of Australia before the French or Dutch, who had colonised islands further north. The British settlements all failed for a variety of reasons, such as lack of water and fresh food, sickness and isolation.
It is difficult to assess the impact of these settlements on the local Aboriginal people and the type of relationship that developed between them and the British. Certainly, some Aboriginals worked at the settlements. Exposure to new sickness was an ever-present danger. As in other parts of Australia, disease and the disruption it caused to society devastated the local Aboriginal population.
Water buffalo have had a big influence on the Kakadu region as well. By the 1880s the number of buffaloes escaped from early settlements had grown so much that hunting them for skins and horns was economically successful.
The industry began on the Adelaide River, close to Darwin, and moved east to the Mary River and Alligator Rivers regions.
Most of the buffalo hunting and skin curing was done in the dry season, between June and September, when buffaloes gathered around the remaining billabongs. During the wet season hunting stopped because the ground was too muddy to follow the buffalo and the harvested hides would rot. The buffalo hunting industry became an important employer of Aboriginal people during the dry-season months.
Missionaries had a big influence on the Aboriginal people of the Alligator Rivers area. Many of the people lived and went to school at missions. Two missions were set up in the region in the early part of the century. Kapalga Native Industrial Mission was started near the South Alligator River in 1899, but lasted only four years. The Oenpelli Mission began in 1925, when the Church of England Missionary Society accepted an offer from the Northern Territory Administration to take over the area, which had been used as a dairy farm. The Oenpelli Mission operated for 50 years.
Some writers and anthropologists say that missionaries, in trying to ‘civilise and institutionalise’ Aboriginal people, forced them to give up their lifestyle, language, religion, ceremonies and change the whole way they lived. Others say that, although they might not have used the best methods to achieve their goal, the missionaries did care about the Aboriginal people at a time when wider Australian society did not.
The pastoral industry made started slowly in the Top End. Pastoral leases in the Kakadu area were progressively given up from 1889, because the Victoria River and the Barkly Tablelands were better pastoral regions.
In southern Kakadu much of Goodparla and Gimbat was claimed in the mid-1870s by three pastoralists, Roderick, Travers and Sergison. The leases were later passed on to a series of owners, who were all unsuccessful. In 1987 both stations were taken back by the Commonwealth and added to Kakadu National Park.
There was a sawmill at Nourlangie Camp, begun by Chinese workers, probably before World War I, to cut stands of cypress pine in the area. After World War II there were a number of small-scale activities, including dingo shooting and trapping, brumby shooting, crocodile shooting, tourism and forestry.
Nourlangie Camp was again the site of a sawmill in the 1950s, until the cypress pines were cleared. In 1958 it became a safari camp for tourists. Soon after, a similar camp was started at Patonga and at Muirella Park. People were flown in to hunt buffalo, crocodiles and fishing.
Crocodile hunters often made use of the bush skills of Aboriginal people. By copying a wallaby’s tail hitting the ground, Aboriginal hunters could attract crocodiles, making it easier to shoot the animals. Using paperbark rafts, they would track the movement of a wounded crocodile and get the carcass for skinning. The skins were then sold to make leather goods. Aboriginal people became less involved in commercial hunting of crocodiles once night spotlight shooting started. Freshwater Crocodiles have been protected by law since 1964 and Saltwater Crocodiles since 1971.
Minerals were found in the Top End during the building of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line line between 1870 and 1872, in the Pine Creek – Adelaide River area. A number of short mining booms followed.