Experience the best of Kakadu

Kakadu National Park covers nearly 20,000 square kilometres of the Top End of the Northern Territory, east of Darwin, and is listed by UNESCO for both its natural and its cultural values. The land belongs to its Aboriginal traditional owners and is managed jointly with the national parks service, and people have lived here for tens of thousands of years.

Rock shelters at Ubirr and Burrungkuy, also called Nourlangie, are covered in paintings of animals, fish and figures. The floodplains of the South and East Alligator rivers fill with water birds, and saltwater crocodiles live in the rivers. Jim Jim Falls and Twin Falls drop from the Arnhem Land escarpment, and Yellow Water, a wetland near Cooinda, is known for its birdlife at dawn.

The traditional owners recognise six seasons rather than two, from the heat and storms before the monsoon to the cool, dry weather that follows it. Barramundi, a fish of the rivers and floodplains, is the Top End's signature, and the dry season opens most of the roads and tracks that the wet season floods.