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Kakadu National Park
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How it came to be
Aboriginal people have lived in Kakadu continuously for at least 40,000 years. The name probably comes from a mispronunciation of Gaagudju, a language once spoken in the area. The park holds more than 5,000 rock art sites, with some paintings up to 20,000 years old; Ubirr and Nourlangie, formally Burrunguy, are the best known.
In 1845 the German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt became the first European to reach the region overland. The national park was established on 5 April 1979 and proclaimed in stages up to 1991. A board of management set up in 1989 has an Aboriginal majority of ten of its fifteen members, and the park is run jointly by its traditional owners and the government.
Kakadu was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1981, and its boundaries were significantly modified in 1987 and 1992. The Ranger uranium mine, excised from the property, closed in 2021. Koongarra, another excised area, was added to the World Heritage property in 2011.
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