Jabiru Northern Territory | |||||||||
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Coordinates | 12°40′S132°50′E / 12.667°S 132.833°E | ||||||||
Population | 1,081 (2016 census) [1] | ||||||||
Postcode(s) | 0886 | ||||||||
Elevation | 27 m (89 ft) | ||||||||
Location | 256 km (159 mi) from Darwin | ||||||||
LGA(s) | West Arnhem Region | ||||||||
Territory electorate(s) | Arafura | ||||||||
Federal division(s) | Lingiari | ||||||||
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Jabiru is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Built in 1982, the town is completely surrounded by Kakadu National Park. At the 2016 census, Jabiru had a population of 1,081. It is named after the black-necked stork often seen in the wetlands and billabongs of Kakadu, [2] which is commonly referred to in Australia as a Jabiru (not to be confused with the stork native to South and Central America).
A township in the Alligator Rivers region of Arnhem Land was first proposed in the early 1970s to support a rapid growth in tourism following the construction of the Arnhem Highway. [3] A view expressed by some witnesses before the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry was that the development of the Ranger Uranium Mine and its supporting infrastructure would also support growth in the tourism industry. A new town could be established as a regional service centre, providing both homes for workers at the mine and tourist accommodation for visitors to the proposed Kakadu National Park. [3]
The township of Jabiru began construction in 1982, after a 13 square kilometres (5.0 sq mi) area was leased to the Jabiru Town Development Authority (JTDA) in 1981 by the Director of National Parks and Wildlife. Under this agreement, the JTDA controlled development through subleases to the operators of the Ranger Uranium mine, government agencies and private business. Under the conditions of the lease, the town was only to allow permanent residents who were associated with the operation of the mine, government agencies or essential services. The population was not to exceed 3500. These conditions were intended to protect the world heritage site by minimising the footprint of urban development. [4]
The second management plan for the Kakadu National Park in 1986 permitted expansion of the town's role as a tourism service centre, with the development of accommodation and tourism businesses subject to agreement by the traditional land owners and Northern Land Council. The first such development was the iconic Gagudju Crocodile Hotel, opened in 1988. [4]
The JTDA delegated local government responsibility to the Jabiru Town Council. The Northern Territory Government amalgamated Jabiru Town Council and the West Arnhem Shire (Region) in 2008.[ citation needed ] Jabiru town services are administered by the West Arnhem Regional Council, whose council chambers are in the town plaza.[ verification needed ]
The Mirrar clan were recognised as the traditional title holders of Jabiru Township in November 2018, [5] but a dispute over the native title was drawn out for years. Following the closure of the mine and expiry of the lease, the town was formally handed over to the Mirrar people on 16 June 2021 by the federal Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, and the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, with settlement date fixed at 30 June. [6]
According to the 2016 census of Population, there were 1,081 people in Jabiru.
Apart from the Ranger mine, Jabiru's most notable industries are tourism, being the commercial and accommodation hub of Kakadu National Park, and Aboriginal arts and culture. Jabiru features a small town plaza that includes government offices, magistrate's court and emergency services.[ citation needed ]
Recreational facilities include the Jabiru town lake (picnic areas and barbecues), freshwater fishing for barramundi (a local specialty), the Yellow Water cruise, day-trips to Ubirr Rock, Twin Falls and other natural features of Kakadu National Park.[ citation needed ]
There is a sports and social club, an Olympic-size swimming pool (the only place guaranteed safe from crocodiles to swim), cricket ovals where cricket and Australian rules football are played. Magela Field in Jabiru is home to the Jabiru Bushratz RUFC, who celebrate their 25th year in 2008. There is also a 9-hole golf course which is the only licensed premises for takeaway alcohol; however only members can buy takeaway alcohol there. Visitors can consume alcohol in opened containers on licensed premises.[ citation needed ]
West Arnhem Regional Council, with the support of Library & Archives NT, delivers public library and information services in Jabiru which are free to all residents of the region, with options also being available to short-term residents and visitors. [7] The library aims to provide a culture-rich environment with a focus on collecting materials, in all formats, with a focus on the Kakadu and West Arnhem region. [8]
Jabiru has a tropical savanna climate (Aw), typical of most of the Top End. Jabiru experiences heavy rain that often results in widespread flooding along the Arnhem Highway and Kakadu Highway. During 2006–07 Jabiru had its biggest wet season on record cutting both highways after almost 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) of rain fell over a 3-month period. The Arnhem Highway was cut off for several weeks as the West Alligator bridge was severely damaged. Temperatures can drop below 10 °C (50 °F) in the winter/dry season from May to August and peak at over 40 °C (104 °F) during the buildup season from September to November. Spectacular electrical storms are also frequent during this period, before the prolonged rains of the wet season arrive. The wet season is usually associated with the monsoon rains and tropical cyclones and it occurs between December and March (the southern hemisphere summer), when thunderstorms are common and afternoon relative humidity averages over 70 percent during the wettest months.
Climate data for Jabiru, Northern Territory, Australia (1991-2020 normals, extremes and sunshine 1971–present) | |||||||||||||
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Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
Record high °C (°F) | 38.4 (101.1) | 37.7 (99.9) | 38.0 (100.4) | 38.0 (100.4) | 37.6 (99.7) | 36.7 (98.1) | 36.2 (97.2) | 38.1 (100.6) | 40.4 (104.7) | 42.3 (108.1) | 42.4 (108.3) | 41.6 (106.9) | 42.4 (108.3) |
Mean daily maximum °C (°F) | 33.8 (92.8) | 33.6 (92.5) | 34.2 (93.6) | 34.7 (94.5) | 33.7 (92.7) | 32.2 (90.0) | 32.5 (90.5) | 34.0 (93.2) | 36.7 (98.1) | 37.9 (100.2) | 37.4 (99.3) | 35.3 (95.5) | 34.7 (94.4) |
Daily mean °C (°F) | 29.3 (84.7) | 29.2 (84.6) | 29.5 (85.1) | 29.3 (84.7) | 28.0 (82.4) | 26.1 (79.0) | 25.8 (78.4) | 26.6 (79.9) | 28.3 (82.9) | 31.0 (87.8) | 31.3 (88.3) | 30.3 (86.5) | 28.7 (83.7) |
Mean daily minimum °C (°F) | 24.8 (76.6) | 24.7 (76.5) | 24.7 (76.5) | 23.9 (75.0) | 22.2 (72.0) | 19.9 (67.8) | 19.1 (66.4) | 19.2 (66.6) | 21.7 (71.1) | 24.1 (75.4) | 25.1 (77.2) | 25.2 (77.4) | 22.9 (73.2) |
Record low °C (°F) | 20.3 (68.5) | 20.6 (69.1) | 19.5 (67.1) | 16.0 (60.8) | 13.9 (57.0) | 9.9 (49.8) | 8.8 (47.8) | 12.0 (53.6) | 12.0 (53.6) | 13.7 (56.7) | 19.0 (66.2) | 21.1 (70.0) | 8.8 (47.8) |
Average rainfall mm (inches) | 370.2 (14.57) | 369.0 (14.53) | 297.0 (11.69) | 108.8 (4.28) | 20.7 (0.81) | 1.3 (0.05) | 3.3 (0.13) | 1.4 (0.06) | 13.6 (0.54) | 49.4 (1.94) | 123.2 (4.85) | 230.6 (9.08) | 1,588.5 (62.53) |
Average rainy days (≥ 1 mm) | 19.1 | 17.8 | 16.4 | 6.4 | 1.7 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.5 | 3.0 | 9.0 | 14.6 | 89.1 |
Average afternoon relative humidity (%) | 66 | 69 | 58 | 44 | 37 | 34 | 29 | 26 | 25 | 28 | 39 | 56 | 43 |
Average dew point °C (°F) | 24.0 (75.2) | 24.4 (75.9) | 22.4 (72.3) | 18.7 (65.7) | 15.7 (60.3) | 13.1 (55.6) | 11.0 (51.8) | 10.3 (50.5) | 11.9 (53.4) | 14.5 (58.1) | 18.8 (65.8) | 22.5 (72.5) | 17.3 (63.1) |
Mean monthly sunshine hours | 198.4 | 186.5 | 189.1 | 258.0 | 288.3 | 282.0 | 300.7 | 310.0 | 282.0 | 291.4 | 252.0 | 226.3 | 3,064.7 |
Mean daily sunshine hours | 6.4 | 6.6 | 6.1 | 8.6 | 9.3 | 9.4 | 9.7 | 10.0 | 9.4 | 9.4 | 8.4 | 7.3 | 8.4 |
Percent possible sunshine | 50 | 53 | 50 | 73 | 81 | 82 | 85 | 85 | 78 | 76 | 66 | 57 | 70 |
Source 1: Australian Bureau of Meteorology [9] | |||||||||||||
Source 2: Australian Bureau of Meteorology [10] |
The Northern Territory is an Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Australia to the west, South Australia to the south, and Queensland to the east. To the north, the Northern Territory looks out to the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria, including Western New Guinea and various other islands of the Indonesian archipelago.
Kakadu National Park is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km (106 mi) southeast of Darwin. It is a World Heritage Site. Kakadu is also gazetted as a locality, covering the same area as the national park, with 313 people recorded living there in the 2016 Australian census.
Humpty Doo is a town in Australia's Northern Territory, situated just south of the Arnhem Highway, approximately 40 km from Darwin. At the 2016 census, Humpty Doo had a population of 4,313 people. Its local government area is Litchfield Municipality. The town is a popular stopping point for tourists travelling between Darwin and Kakadu National Park, and boasts many attractions of its own. The main industries are agriculture and tourism; however, most residents commute to Darwin or Palmerston for work, and many regard it as a dormitory town.
Jabiluka is a pair of uranium deposits and mine development in the Northern Territory of Australia that was to have been built on land belonging to the Mirarr clan of Aboriginal people. The mine site is surrounded by, but not part of, the World Heritage–listed Kakadu National Park.
Katherine is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is situated on the Katherine River, after which it is named, 320 kilometres (200 mi) southeast of Darwin. The fourth largest settlement in the Territory, it is known as the place where "The outback meets the tropics". Katherine had an urban population of 5,980 at the 2021 Australia Census.
The Ranger Uranium Mine was a uranium mine in the Northern Territory of Australia. The site is surrounded by, but separate from Kakadu National Park, 230 km east of Darwin. The orebody was discovered in late 1969, and the mine commenced operation in 1980, reaching full production of uranium oxide in 1981 and ceased stockpile processing on 8 January 2021. Mining activities had ceased in 2012. It was owned and operated by Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), a public company 86.33% owned by Rio Tinto Group, the remainder held by the public. Uranium mined at Ranger was sold for use in nuclear power stations in Japan, South Korea, China, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the United States.
Alligator Rivers is the name of an area in an Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory of Australia, containing three rivers, the East, West, and South Alligator Rivers. It is regarded as one of the richest biological regions in Australia, with part of the region in the Kakadu National Park. It is an Important Bird Area (IBA), lying to the east of the Adelaide and Mary River Floodplains IBA. It also contains mineral deposits, especially uranium, and the Ranger Uranium Mine is located there. The area is also rich in Australian Aboriginal art, with 1500 sites. The Kakadu National Park is one of the few World Heritage sites on the list because of both its natural and human heritage values. They were explored by Lieutenant Phillip Parker King in 1820, who named them in the mistaken belief that the crocodiles in the estuaries were alligators.
The Arnhem Highway is a 227 kilometre highway in the Northern Territory of Australia. It links the mining town of Jabiru, in Kakadu National Park, to the Stuart Highway at a point 35 kilometres south of Darwin.
The Twin Falls is a cascade waterfall on the South Alligator River that descends over the Arnhem Land escarpment within the UNESCO World Heritage–listed Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. In 1980, The Twin Falls area was listed on the now-defunct Register of the National Estate.
Energy Resources of Australia Ltd is a public company based in Australia. It is a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group which as of 2021 owns 86.3% of the company. The remainder is publicly held and traded on the Australian Securities Exchange. The chairman is Peter McMahon and Chief Executive is Andrea Sutton.
Kakadu National Park, located in the Northern Territory of Australia, possesses within its boundaries a number of large uranium deposits. The uranium is legally owned by the Australian Government, and is sold internationally, having a large effect on the Australian economy. The mining has been controversial, due to the widespread publicity regarding the potential danger of nuclear power and uranium mining, as well as because of objections by some Indigenous groups. This controversy is significant because it involves a number of important political issues in Australia: Native Title, the environment, and Federal-State-Territory relations.
The Jim Jim Falls is a plunge waterfall on the Jim Jim Creek that descends over the Arnhem Land escarpment within the UNESCO World Heritage–listed Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory of Australia. The Jim Jim Falls area is registered on the Australian National Heritage List.
Severe Tropical Cyclone George was one of the most powerful Australian tropical cyclones on record, attaining a minimum barometric pressure of 902 mbar. It was also the strongest tropical cyclone worldwide in 2007 and the last Australian region tropical cyclone to achieve this record to date. The cyclone formed on 26 February 2007 in the Northern Territory's Top End, and intensified when it entered the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, before crossing the northern coast of the Kimberley. It moved over the Indian Ocean, intensifying to a Category 4 cyclone, and eventually crossed the Pilbara coast just east of Port Hedland at peak intensity. After further analysis from the Bureau of Meteorology, George was reclassified to Category 5. The cyclone caused significant damage to the town of Port Hedland and numerous isolated mining camps around the town. Losses in Northern Territory amounted to at least A$12 million. Two people died and more than a dozen others were infected in a melioidosis outbreak following the Northern Territory floods. Insured damage in Western Australia amounted to $8 million, and there were three fatalities.
The West Arnhem Region is a local government area of the Northern Territory, Australia and is administered by the West Arnhem Regional Council. The region covers an area of 49,675 square kilometres (19,180 sq mi) and had a population of 6,902 in June 2018.
Batchelor is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. The town is the current seat and largest town of the Coomalie Shire local government area. It is located 98 kilometres (61 mi) south of the territory capital, Darwin. A number of residents commute to Darwin and its suburbs for work.
Yvonne Margarula is an Aboriginal Australian environmentalist who won the 1998 Friends of the Earth International Environment Award and the 1998 Nuclear-Free Future Award. She also won the 1999 US Goldman Environmental Prize, with Jacqui Katona, in recognition of efforts to protect their country and culture against uranium mining.
George Jiří Chaloupka OAM, FAHA was an expert on Indigenous Australian rock art. He identified and documented thousands of rock art sites, and was a passionate advocate for Aboriginal Australian art, as longest continuing art tradition in the world. He is especially known for the much-debated assignation of a four-phase style sequence to rock art in Arnhem Land, and the term "Dynamic Figures", which he assigned to rock art described by him in Mirrar country of western Arnhem Land.
The Bininj are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Arnhem land in the Northern Territory. The sub-groups of Bininj are sometimes referred to by the various language dialects spoken in the region, that is, the group of dialects known as Bininj Kunwok; so the people may be named the Kunwinjku, Kuninjku, Kundjeyhmi (Gundjeihmi), Manyallaluk Mayali, Kundedjnjenghmi and Kune groups.
The Gaagudju, also known as the Kakadu, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory. There are four clans, being the Bunitj or Bunidj, the Djindibi, and two Mirarr clans. Three languages are spoken among the Mirarr or Mirrar clan: the majority speak Kundjeyhmi, while others speak Gaagudju and others another language.
The Gagudju Crocodile Hotel, also known as Kakadu Crocodile Hotel or just the Croc Hotel is a 3.5 star hotel located in Jabiru, Northern Territory, within Australia's Kakadu National Park. Owned by the Indigenous clans of the Gaagudju people, it was the first major tourism development in the National Park and is notable for its unique design in the shape of a crocodile. Since 2014, the hotel has been operated by the Accor group under the Mecure brand.