RUNNING DEEP

WINDOWS DOWN, THE WARM AIR IS SWEET and dank with flowering paperbarks. It’s the start of the Dry and Sab’s tyres slice through the submerged road that is still blended into the adjacent billabong. We’re not in Sydney anymore, where water is defined by the lines of the harbour foreshore. And we’re not in Darwin either, where the tropical waters of the Arafura Sea lie flat at its beaches, and simulated waves at the waterfront slosh holidaymakers around like rubber ducks.

We’re in the watery world of Kakadu: Australia’s largest terrestrial national park, heritage listed for both its cultural and natural significance, and just three hours north of the Northern Territory’s capital. One hundred and forty million years ago Kakadu was under a shallow sea and the dramatic escarpments of its so-called stone country were sea cliffs; today, wetlands cover more than one third of the park’s 20,000 square kilometres. A quarter of all Australia’s freshwater fish species live here, along with a third of its bird species and one-tenth of the Territory’s saltwater crocodiles. And while we can navigate it with human ingenuity – driving through rivers and propelling ourselves across floodplains – we’re really just the interlopers here: awkward and awestruck while all animal life glides and swoops and swims around us in rhythm with the ecosystem.

The feeling first strikes me a few minutes into a cruise on Yellow Water