CROCS CROSSING

THE WESTERN GATEWAY TO THE NT'S ARNHEM LAND IS RATED THE MOST DANGEROUS CAUSEWAY IN THE COUNTRY, SO READ ON AND TAKE NOTE OR BE SWEPT AWAY TO THE MERCY OF THE RESIDENT CROCS

- DICK EUSSEN

RATED as the most dangerous crossing in Australia, Cahills Crossing is named after pioneer settler Paddy Cahill who was known as the “Buffalo Bill” of Australia due to his prowess as a buffalo shooter. While the original ‘Cahills Crossing’ is a couple of kilometres upstream in the freshwater reach of the river, the existing causeway was named after him when it was constructed in 1956 – and while some sources claim it’s the original, it’s not.

RIVER ADVENTURES

I first saw the crossing in the early 1960s during a fishing and hunting trip to the Alligator Rivers Region, as the area was then known by. It became the Kakadu National Park in 1979. In May 1975, my wife Eileen and I drove into Darwin in our Series 3 Land Rover tray-back to find a city in despair and broken from its disastrous bout with Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve, 1974. We had permits for Mount Borradaile and Malay Bay. It was the first time I drove over Cahills Crossing and into forbidden Arnhem Land, the beginning of a grand adventure and love affair that has endured.

Arnhem Land is different to other parts of Australia as there is something primeval, mystic and uplifting in the monsoon woodlands, the stone country of the Arnhem Land Escarpment, the rivers and beaches, that is unmatched anywhere else.

On the return, we fished and caught barramundi while standing knee-deep in the tidal waters on Cahills Crossing. It was déjà vu for three years in a row before we moved to the new town of Jabiru in 1979. In those days, the road from the Arnhem Highway junction was unsealed and badly corrugated.