KAKADU is a world television first: a unique innovation in nature documentary. For the first time people are included among all living things in the same natural drama: microscopic creatures, insects, plants, aquatic life, flesh seeking reptiles, birds and humans. All are part of the dance of life and death, each with a powerful part to play. Australians are part of nature in Kakadu.
Kakadu is wild: A land where humans are just another species fighting to survive in the eternal dance of evolutionary creation. There is nowhere more primal and frightening magical and entrancing. This is also a story of human devotion. It is the untold story of a year in Kakadu, Australia’s largest terrestrial national park.
Here on the flood plains and ancient sculptured escarpments danger and great beauty are often the same. This is the World Heritage Listed natural world at its most magnificent and beguiling: paradise with majesty and passion. But take care. Deadly predators lie beneath the billabong surface and creep through the rugged stone towers.
It’s taken a year of intense filming to bring this four part epic to life: Months of dedication working in searing heat and Monsoon storms. Many hundreds of hours deep in the heart of the living wilderness have created gold standard television: epic feature film drama for the small screen.
KAKADU gives you a front row seat on a journey of monumental scale. Driven by the passion and dedication of traditional owners and park rangers you embark on a first time journey behind the scenes of a natural universe. It’s a journey where everyone is welcome. Tourists are part of the lifeblood here, natural participants protected by the people who dedicate their lives to every visitor’s care.
Through the rangers’ eyes, and the scientists and traditional owners who give their lives to Kakadu comes a new understanding of living things but also a deep insight into the elemental power of nature at dramatic extremes.
KAKADU is the story of re-birth, renewal and change, of six seasons defined by the first Australians unfolding as they have for millennia, each new season bringing unique drama and beauty, nothing ever predictable, nothing staying the same.
In four one hours of action adventure KAKADU delivers on every scale from intimate moments of delicate beauty to the power of a primeval predator devouring its terrified prey. Out of this once in a lifetime process comes a powerful truth: The drama in Kakadu is beyond all prediction.
Once you’ve experienced the adventure you’ll never be the same.
WATCH THE FULL SERIES
Episode 1
It’s May in Kakadu: the aboriginal season of Yegge. After months of Monsoon deluge, the land is slowly drying out. It’s the start of another wild year. Danger and death threaten the annual influx of tourists. In the Jim Jim district, Kakadu’s traditional owners and rangers race to make the park safe from dangerous feral animals, rogue crocs and poachers with blood on their hands.
Episode 2
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.
Episode 3
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.
Episode 4
Monsoon torrents wash away the heat in Kakadu during Gudjewg. With the storms comes unpredictable mayhem every day: floodwaters 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.