Pic: Lewis Burnett / Hunting For Paradise
“There’s so much to Kakadu that the caravaners and
most bike riders don’t see,” Benji explained with a cheeky
grin.
“They stick to the main roads, the tourist areas. They
don’t explore, they don’t discover, they don’t learn. We
should all learn.”
“Kakadu is magic! Isolated, and cut off from the world
and social media, it was all about just living in the exact
moment you were in, no stress about relationships, invest-
ments, social pressure, just living on the absolute edge.”
“I learnt that pigs and buffalo would hear my bike com-
ing and would run off into the bush before I could find
them, so I started putting through the bush in second gear
and one day I parked up - next to a tree ( just in case a buf-
falo came out of the bush and charged me I could climb
it) and stalked to the edge of a billabong, there less than
50m away was about 9 buffalo just wallowing in the mud
completely unaware that I was there. I just sat there with
them as the sun was setting and enjoyed the piece of that
special moment. How do you explain that to people?”
Benji speaks of the aboriginal people of Kakadu like
they’re family, as they taught him so much about the area
and about himself.
“The place has such a raw beauty and energy to it,” he
enthuses.
“I really have fallen in love with not only the place, but
also the people.”
Four months in an area that Benji describes as “an in-
credible journey”. But it had to come to an end as new ad-
ventures were calling, he had more to discover, more life
to live. Cape York was calling. The most northerly tip of
Australia, not much more north than Kakadu, yet a world
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