Kakadu (2013 - 2013)

It’s July in Kakadu: the aboriginal season of Wurrgeng. Locals call it the cold season, but for most visitors it’s blazing hot summer. Each year around 200,000 tourists flood into the park just when nature calls her wildest shots. Bushfires, snakebite, crocodile attacks and road smashes keep traditional owners, rangers and emergency services on call 24/7. More than any other time of the year, it’s life and death pressure for everyone in Kakadu.

It’s December in Kakadu, the time of the monsoon build up: the Traditional Owners call it Gunumeleng. Humidity is almost 100 per cent and temperatures are between 40 and 50 degrees. It’s like walking around in hot water. Everything struggles: animals, plants and humans too. Water is running out, the flood plains are cracked desert landscapes, and the sky is black with huge thunderhead clouds that split the dry ground with lightning, but produce little rain. Madness is in the air and predatory animal instinct as well.

Monsoon torrents wash away the heat in Kakadu during Gudjewg. With the storms comes unpredictable mayhem every day: flood waters rise, feral buffalo stalk unwary tourists, locals get washed towards crocodile infested waters, and savage winds flatten trees - choking kilometres of access roads. Amid the cavalcade of chaos the people of Kakadu go about life and work in this ancient wilderness.