Editing Kakadu National Park (section)

====Explorers====
The [[China|Chinese]], [[Malaysia|Malays]] and [[Portugal|Portuguese]] all claim to have been the first non-Aboriginal explorers of Australia's north coast. The first surviving written account comes from the [[Netherlands|Dutch]]. In 1623 [[Jan Carstenszoon]] made his way west across the [[Gulf of Carpentaria]] to what is believed to be Groote Eylandt. [[Abel Tasman]] is the next documented explorer to visit this part of the coast 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.<ref>{{Cite web |last=State Library of New South Wales |date=2018-03-15 |title=Matthew Flinders: Australia on the map |url=https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/matthew-flinders-australia-map |access-date=2025-04-12 |website=www.sl.nsw.gov.au}}</ref>

[[File:Aboriginal Art Australia(6).jpg|thumb|right|The [[Ubirr]] Aboriginal rock art site]]
[[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 [[Saltwater crocodile|crocodiles]], which he mistook for [[alligator]]s.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Alligator Rivers {{!}} Aboriginal, Wetlands, Mangroves {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Alligator-Rivers |access-date=2025-04-12 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref>

[[Ludwig Leichhardt]] was the first land-based European explorer to visit the Kakadu region, in 1845 on his route 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 proceeding north.<ref>{{Cite web |last=National Museum of Australia |title=National Museum of Australia - Leichhardt expedition |url=https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/leichhardt-expedition |access-date=2025-04-12 |website=www.nma.gov.au |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Aboriginal Art Australia.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Indigenous Australian art|Rock art]] painting at Ubirr]]

In 1862, [[John McDouall Stuart]] travelled along the south-western boundary of Kakadu but did not see any people.<ref>{{Cite web |last=baschiera |first=dan |title=On Leichhardt's Path Kakadu 1845 : Reflections walking a time tunnel |url=https://territorystories.nt.gov.au/10070/927468/0/147 |access-date=2025-04-12 |website=On Leichhardt's Path Kakadu 1845 : Reflections walking a time tunnel}}</ref>

The first non-Aboriginal people to visit and have sustained contact with Aboriginal people in northern Australia were the Macassans from [[Sulawesi]] and other parts of the [[Indonesia]]n archipelago. They travelled to northern Australia every wet season, probably from the last quarter of the seventeenth century, in sailing boats called ''prau''s. Their main aim was to harvest trepang ([[Sea cucumber (food)|sea cucumber]]), turtle shell, [[pearl]]s and other prized items to trade in their homeland. Aboriginal people were involved in harvesting and processing the trepang, and in collecting and exchanging the other goods.

There is no evidence that the [[Macassan contact with Australia|Macassans]] spent time on the coast of Kakadu but there is evidence of some contact between Macassan culture and Aboriginal people of the Kakadu area. Among the artefacts from archaeological digs in the park are glass and metal fragments that probably came from the Macassans, either directly or through trade with the [[Cobourg Peninsula]] people.

The [[Great Britain|British]] attempted a number of settlements on the northern Australian coast in the early part of the nineteenth century: [[Fort Dundas]] on [[Melville Island (Northern Territory)|Melville Island]] in 1824; [[Fort Wellington, Australia|Fort Wellington]] at [[Raffles Bay]] in 1829; and Victoria Settlement ([[Port Essington]]) on the Cobourg Peninsula in 1838. They were anxious to secure the north of Australia before the French or Dutch, who had colonised islands further north. The British settlements were all subsequently abandoned for a variety of reasons, such as lack of water and fresh food, sickness and isolation.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2019-12-02 |title=In 1838, the British came to colonise northern Australia. They returned forever changed |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-03/port-essington-worlds-end-failed-british-colonial-settlement/11730570 |access-date=2025-04-12 |work=ABC News |language=en-AU}}</ref>