Private tour: Kakadu and Litchfield Hiking Adventure

Pick up from your Darwin hotel and head south down the Stuart Highway. The first stop is Berry Springs Nature Park, about 50 km from Darwin, where clear spring-fed pools sit in monsoon forest behind a low weir built by servicemen during the Second World War as part of a rest and recreation camp. Orange-footed scrubfowl scratch through the leaf litter here, and the loop walk is good for fruit-eating birds — rose-crowned fruit-doves, figbirds, yellow orioles. Into Litchfield, past the magnetic termite mound field, where wedge-shaped mounds of Amitermes meridionalis stand two metres high and up to a century old, aligned almost exactly north–south so that the broad faces catch the low morning and evening sun while only a thin edge faces the midday heat. Research suggests the termites use the earth’s magnetic field to set the axis. The taller, rounded mounds alongside them belong to a different species, the cathedral termite Nasutitermes triodiae. At Wangi Falls (Ngantjurr), two cascades drop into a deep plunge pool, and the 1.6km track climbs through monsoon forest and up onto the escarpment above them. Then Tolmer Falls, where a 400m sealed path leads to viewing decks above a fall that drops in two stages over the sandstone; there is no access to the pool below, which protects the colony of near-threatened orange leaf-nosed bats in the caves at its base, and a natural rock arch spans the creek just above the lip. The afternoon finishes at Buley Rockhole, a chain of pools and small cascades you can sit in rather than swim across, and at Florence Falls (Karrimurri), reached by 160 steps down through rainforest to twin falls and a large pool. Overnight: Litchfield area. Meals: L/D.

An early start and about three and a half hours east and south, crossing out of the Litchfield sandstone and into Kakadu on the Old Jim Jim Road, which is 4WD only. This is the park’s southern country — open eucalypt savanna on the plateau, with monsoon forest surviving only where there is permanent water and shelter from fire. Across the Northern Territory, those closed-forest patches cover about 0.2% of the land area, which is why the gorge floors matter so much. The Maguk walk is 2km return, graded 4, following a sandy and rocky creek bed through monsoon forest to a small waterfall and a plunge pool at the base of a gorge. Rainbow pittas and friarbirds are regular along the creek. There is time to swim before the walk back out and the drive on to Cooinda, on the edge of the South Alligator floodplain, where the next two nights are in safari-style glamping tents. Overnight: Cooinda. Meals: B/L.

On the water at 6:45am for a two-hour cruise on Yellow Water (Ngurrungurrudjba), a billabong on the South Alligator floodplain and part of a Ramsar-listed wetland of 1.98 million ha. By mid-dry season, the floodplain has drawn down to its permanent water, and everything concentrates there. Kakadu holds an estimated 10,000 saltwater crocodiles and more than 280 recorded bird species, about a third of Australia’s total; the cruise typically produces crocodiles, black-necked storks, magpie geese, egrets, comb-crested jacanas and white-bellied sea-eagles hunting over the billabong. Breakfast, then the drive to Nanguluwurr on the northern side of Burrungkuy. The walk in is 3.4km return, graded 3, through quiet woodland; the gallery at the end carries 938 recorded motifs, including hand stencils many thousands of years old, Dynamic Figures from the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, x-ray fish, the spirit figure Algaihgo, and the painting of a European sailing ship with its anchor chain — contact art, made by someone who stood on this escarpment and watched the outside world arrive. In the afternoon, the 1.5km circuit at Burrungkuy (Nourlangie) takes in the Anbangbang Shelter, where excavation found regular occupation over the last 6,000 years and occasional use as far back as 20,000 years, and the Anbangbang Gallery itself, with Namarrgon the Lightning Man among the figures Nayombolmi and Djimongurr painted in the 1963–64 wet season. Steps climb to the Kunwarddewardde Lookout over the Arnhem Land escarpment. The day ends on the sloping rock face at Nawurlandja, looking across Anbangbang Billabong to Burrungkuy in the late light. Overnight: Cooinda. Meals: B/L.

North to Ubirr, on the country of the Bunitj, Manilagarr and Mandjurlgunj peoples. The main gallery loop is 1km and flat, and the paintings on it are freshwater-period x-ray work from roughly the last 1,500 years: barramundi and mullet with their bones and organs shown, magpie geese, wallaby, goanna, echidna, yams — a record of what the wetlands provided. Elsewhere on the loop are the Rainbow Serpent gallery, where Garranga’rreli painted her own image on the rock as she passed through; the Mabuyu hunting figure, whose story belongs to Bininj and is one your guide will point to rather than retell; and a contact-period painting of a white man in shirt and boots with his hands in his pockets. Near the main gallery is a thylacine, painted when the animal still lived here. From the loop it is a 250m climb to the Nadab lookout and a 360-degree view over the floodplain to the Arnhem Land escarpment. Then Cahills Crossing on the East Alligator River (Erre), the causeway into Arnhem Land and the park’s eastern boundary. Big tides push muddy water, mullet and barramundi up over the causeway, and saltwater crocodiles gather at the concentration point to feed — the park’s crocodile manager has measured densities of seven to nine animals per kilometre here. You watch from the viewing platforms, linked by a short rainforest walk. It is never safe to walk on the crossing itself. Lunch, then the drive of about three and a half hours back to Darwin, with hotel drop-off in the late afternoon. Meals: B/L.