The Top End: Darwin, Kakadu, Katherine and Litchfield

The Top End roads

The Top End is the northern tip of the Northern Territory, around Darwin. You drive long, straight roads, between open woodland and floodplains. On the Arnhem Highway, towards Kakadu, water buffalo graze in the wet grasslands. In the evening, you climb the rock at Ubirr to watch the sun set over the plains.

At dawn, a cruise on Yellow Water glides past water lilies, jabirus and crocodiles. Further south, on the Stuart Highway, road trains with three or four trailers pass termite mounds as tall as a man.

After Kakadu, every stage ends in the water: Nitmiluk Gorge by canoe, the warm springs of Mataranka, the pools of Leliyn (Edith Falls), then the waterfalls of Litchfield. In the dry season, on Thursdays and Sundays, the Mindil Beach market in Darwin sets up facing the sunset.

At Ubirr, the main gallery shows fish, turtles and wallabies painted in the “X-ray” style: you can see their bones and organs. The Mimi spirits, very thin, are painted high up; according to tradition, they slip into the cracks in the rock. You can also see a thylacine, gone from the region for thousands of years, and Europeans painted after first contact.

Below Burrungkuy, the Anbangbang gallery shows Namarrgon, the Lightning Man. For the Bininj, his storms announce the wet season. He was painted during the 1963–64 wet season by Nayombolmi, of the Bardmardi clan, probably over older figures.

The seasons and the crocodiles

Visitors talk about two seasons, the dry and the wet. The Bininj calendar has six, set by the rain, the plants and the animals. Kunumeleng, from mid-October to December, is the season of the first storms, what Australians call the “build-up”. Then come the monsoon and the end of the rains. From May to mid-October come the dry seasons: the time when most roads and pools are open.

The rivers you cross belong to saltwater crocodiles. When hunting them was banned in 1971, about 3,000 were left in the Northern Territory; today there are thought to be more than 100,000. Every year, before swimming opens, rangers trap them in the pools of Litchfield and Nitmiluk. You only swim where a sign says you can. Keep well back from the edge of rivers and billabongs (oxbow lakes).

What not to miss

1. 1Ubirr at sunsetThe paintings in the main gallery, then the view from the top of the rock.
2. 2The Yellow Water cruiseAt dawn, from Cooinda, among waterbirds and crocodiles; book ahead.
3. 3Nitmiluk GorgeThirteen gorges in the sandstone, the first ones by boat or canoe, on land handed back to the Jawoyn in 1989.
4. 4The magnetic termite moundsIn Litchfield, flat termite mounds, lined up north–south to stay cooler at midday.
5. 5The Mataranka thermal poolWater at 34 °C under the palms, near the Elsey cattle station, which Jeannie Gunn described in a 1908 novel.
6. 6Darwin and the warThe museum at East Point tells the story of the bombing of 19 February 1942, launched mainly from four of the Pearl Harbor aircraft carriers.

The Top End in pictures

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The twin falls of Florence Falls and their plunge pool, in Litchfield.

The Top End table

The Top End’s fish is barramundi, grilled or fried. Mud crabs are the coast’s other speciality. Pubs and roadhouses also serve buffalo, kangaroo or crocodile, often in a burger.

Darwin is closer to Indonesia than to Sydney: at the Mindil Beach market, you eat laksa soups, satays and curries. The Kakadu plum, a bush fruit, is very rich in vitamin C.