It was with undoubted excitement that I arrived in Jabiru (or The Jabs to those in the know). Jabiru is in the heart of Kakadu National Park. The beauty of it is that it is only about 4 hours from Darwin.

Kakadu is, as expected, one of the most stunning things that you will ever see. Every time I begin complimenting the views of places I have been to, I feel a certain part of Mum and Dad (Mr and Mrs Whitehouse to you!) creeping into me. I see views as something that you don’t appreciate necessarily as a kid, and the first signs that you actually care about the view of a place are also the first sign that you are turning into an adult.

Kakadu is boundless plains of age-old trees in red dirt, mixed with fresh flowing water that seems to spring from nowhere. Beautiful doesn’t come close to describing it. One of the definite attractions of rural Australia is that every time you step off a highway somewhere, there is a small part of you that thinks that you may be only the third, second, or maybe even the first person to ever step on that piece of ground. It’s so incredibly satisfying to the mysterious.

Coming from the strangeness of the Batchelor experience, I didn’t really know what to expect in Jabiru. Jabiru is a mining town of about 1500 people (a little bigger than Batchelor). The first thing that strikes you when you enter Jabiru is that it is so lush - so lush that there are lawns! It’s almost a bit bizarre. The next thing you notice is that it is built for two things - mining workers and TOURISTS. Tourists because Kakadu is just so damn beautiful, and miners for the nearby Ranger Uranium mine.

It is for these 2 reasons that Jabiru was a stark contrast to Batchelor. There is money in Jabiru and, it seems, lots of it. The Uranium mine brings large royalties to the local Aboriginal corporation for whose grounds the mine is on. This money spills over into all parts of the community. It seems that a large mine with people earning large dollars, commands a place that is in keeping with this.

The Shire’s ability to dedicate resources to their young people, was in stark contrast to where I’d just come from.

Most (if not all) land and houses in Jabiru are owned by the Aboriginal corporation - to whom tennants pay rent. The town is actually full at the moment (that’s right), as there is no more land up for grabs, and no houses to rent. If you want a bed you’re sleeping in the park.

I was fortunate enough to meet with the very active youth committee in Jabiru. They are very proactive and very involved in the local youth centre, organising such cool things as fire-twirling workshops.

Jabiru has such a different feel to Batchelor. The atmosphere was lighter, and the mood happier. It seemed such a free and easy sort of place. The young people in Jabiru Area School (Kindy - year 10 internal schooling) mirrored this. They were very positive about the place that they were living in. Many of the young people in years 9 and 10 work in local industry (compare that to Batchelor) for 10-15 hours per week whilst at school. They weren’t too preturbed about how this would effect their schooling, it was far more important that they had money to go to Darwin to shop.

Jabiru’s young people like their home because, everyone knows each other; you can walk everywhere; it feels safe in Jabiru; it’s close to Darwin; the Youth Centre, and other youth facilitie; and there are lots of jobs in Jabiru. Most importantly, Jabiru was considered home to them.

The best way that Jabiru was improved were:
1) getting the Cinemas back. There were Cinemas in Jabiru a few years ago, but for some reason (no one could tell me) they have disappeared. If you aren’t prepared to make the trip up to Darwin - waiting for it to hit the video shop is where it’s at.

2) getting old tourists to drive faster.

As Jabiru is a mining town, there are large amounts of young people who move around a lot. There were a couple of teenage guys from Thursday Island in the Torres Strait who have moved 12 times in their lives as their parents moved from mining job to mining job. There was another young man from Tasmania who has moved 6 times.

I asked the young people in the school what was going to happen when Ranger mine runs out of ore in 2008. Their answer was that they would move on to the next mine and the town will disappear. The next thing a voice pipes up from the back of the room - “oi - not everyone is going to leave.” The voice explained that the young people who live on the outstations (one or two houses on the outskirts of town that usually house indigenous locals) would remain and that the town would go on. It’s very true, they will remain - but with the money from the mine gone, these young people questioned what would be left.

There are issues in Jabiru, like there are everywhere, but on the whole, it was miraculous the difference a 2 hour drive east made.

One interesting thing was that I checked out the local Ranger Uranium mine. Apart from bringing that general age of the tour group down, by 55 years, it was quite interesting. There were originally proposed to be 3 mines in Kakadu - Ranger, Jabiluka (the one everyone knows about) and Kingaroy (sp?). I didn’t know much about these mines at all, except that for some reason Jabiluka and Kingaroy mines never got the go-ahead from the Aboriginal Corporation for Uranium mining (Ranger is the only operating mine).

What I was fascinated to learn was that Jabiluka and Kingaroy hadn’t got the go-ahead for mining is not because tha Aboriginal corpoartion were dead against their land being mined, or they disagreed with Uranium being mined. It was because they had decided that they had received enough royalties from mining, and that money wasn’t doing them any favours. They saw the money as buying fast cars that kills there kids, as well as bringing grog and violence.

They realised they didn’t need any money - because it wasn’t bringing more happiness to their community. Ina place like Jabiru, where money had brought so many things (definitely in comparison to Batchelor), I thought that it was an incredible mindset to say NO to more money. I felt shivers go down my spine when I realised the enormity of this.

Another highlight of the time in Jabiru was that I managed to find the one place in Australia that still has a Telecom phone box, instead of a Telstra one. Everywhere else - even in the back of whoop whoop in the smallest of Aboriginal communities, Mr Telstra had made it there to change the signs. But not in Jabiru - Telecom it was. C’mon telstra, lift your game…