Discover Cooinda Lodge and its experiences on offer in Kakadu
Sleep on Country in style in Kakadu National Park’s luxury villas at Cooinda Lodge and enjoy a moonlit feast of foraged foods from its bushlands, billabongs and stone country.
Cooinda Lodge in Kakadu is a favourite for Australian big lappers and international guests arriving from Darwin. However, while most stay in Cooinda’s sprawling lodges or glamping tents, we’re in one of its five luxury Yellow Waters Villas.
The resort offers two shaded swimming pools, alfresco and indoor dining, fuel station, general store, the Warradjan Cultural Centre and extensive touring options including Yellow Water Cruises.
Yellow Waters Villas
Each of the five raised, tented villas has its own kitchen and bathroom. There is also an alfresco version of both, with a barbeque and a deep bathtub on its deck looking out into the bush. The canvas villas feature locally produced artworks and books on Aboriginal culture, art magazines and woven cushions and throws bearing local designs. And the scents of quandong and desert lime come to us through the soaps and toiletries of Kakadu Organics. With a king bed and two day beds, the villas sleep two adults and two children.
Lodge Rooms
Cooinda Lodge’s comfortable family-sized lodge rooms sleep two to four adults. The rooms have air conditioning, a full bathroom, tea & coffee amenities, a mini-fridge, TV, ensuite bathroom, and an outdoor terrace. You’ll love enjoying nature from the outdoor terraces.
Outback Retreats: Glamping tents
These glamping tents have bedding, handcrafted Australian furniture, local Indigenous artworks and a deck to immerse in the natural ambience. The outback retreats share a bathroom and amenities center with laundry and kitchen facilities.
Kakadu’s Dird Full Moon Feast
We have booked to join the Dird Full Moon Feast. Dird means ‘moon’ in the most widely spoken of Kakadu’s three languages, Kundjeyhmi. Local Bininj man Ben Tyler has created these feasts with Cooinda Lodge head chef Phillip Foote to showcase the six different seasons in the Kakadu calendar.
The four-course dinner beneath the stars takes place during Wurrkeng, the cold weather season. The food, which is all wild harvested, is a snapshot of Country. It is a genuine taste of the land at this exact moment. We start with a salad featuring muntries (native cranberries), bush cabbage and buffalo mozzarella, before moving to a paper-bark smoked barramundi entrée. Buffalo, slow-cooked kunkedi style (in a ground oven) is the main course. The meal is then finished with gelato of nabiwoh (native ground bee honey) and a rosella syrup sponge.
Each course is paired with a non-alcoholic drink from Australian suppliers. We sip spritzes laced with Davidson plum and end with a native peach bellini made with ALTD Spirit’s alcohol-free base. My favourite is a dark red wine featuring cherry, coffee and garam masala flavours.
The Cooinda tasting plate
If you were to miss the Dird feasts, the Cooinda tasting plate is on offer every day at Mimi’s, the main restaurant at Cooinda. It features crocodile, buffalo, barra and a choir of bush spices and condiments. It’s best kicked off with an icy G&T which you can choose from the seven NT gins on Mimi’s bar menu. The lemon myrtle and pepper berry-infused Green Ant gin is made in Darwin and served in Cooinda Lodge’s bar.
Exploring Kakadu
From Cooinda Lodge, it’s just a kilometre to the Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre. The centre tells the stories of those who have lived here in the past and the present. It also has a fabulous gift shop selling books, handicrafts and soaps and oils from Kakadu Organics and Kakadu Kitchen.
We walk to lookouts, snack beside Jim Jim Billabong and visit one of Kakadu’s most important outdoor art galleries – Burrungkuy (Nourlangie).
Yellow Waters billabong tour
Coasting through Ngurrungurrudjba/ Yellow Waters billabong, I’m in the heart of Kakadu. The two-hour billabong cruise is one of Cooinda Lodge’s signature experiences. Waterlilies float on tranquil waters of the billabong, delicate, long-legged birds pick through the reeds and wild horses graze in the background. There’s a snap and a swirl of water, and a three-metre crocodile’s jaws clamp shut on passing prey.
“The crocs are so fat at the moment,” says Mandy Muir as she pulls the boat up so we can count eight crocodiles lying on the shore. A descendant of the local Murumburr people, Mandy is one of Kakadu’s most senior guides and knows this land intimately. “There are also 288 bird species here,” she adds, pointing out black-headed storks, magpie geese and the tiny, fragile comb-crested jacana – also known as the Jesus bird, as it seems to walk on water.
Cooinda Lodge’s accommodation, billabong cruises and tours and Jabiru’s landmark crocodile-shaped hotel are operated by Accor hotel group. However, Kakadu Tourism is owned by the local Indigenous community.
Cooinda Lodge is a three-hour drive from Darwin on sealed roads.
