Nitmiluk National Park (Katherine Gorge)

Nitmiluk National Park protects a thirteen-gorge system the Katherine River has cut through the Arnhem Land Plateau — red sandstone walls rising up to 70 metres over about 12km of river, in a park of 292,008 hectares. It is Jawoyn country: the Jawoyn people, 17 clans, own the park and jointly manage it with the NT Parks and Wildlife Commission, and hundreds of rock art sites are recorded on its sandstone walls, some thousands of years old. 'Nitmiluk' is the Jawoyn name for Katherine Gorge, pronounced 'Nit-me-look' and meaning 'Cicada Place', after an ancestor heard the song of the cicada here. In the dry the river drops and the gorge separates into calm pools linked by rock bars; in the wet it becomes one continuous waterway. Cruises, canoes and more than 100km of walking tracks are the three ways through it, and which of them you can use depends on the month.

Access is unusually simple for a gorge this size: sealed roads reach both park sectors, the visitor centre sits at the gorge entrance, and a serviced caravan park, cabins and a lodge all sit within the park.

What to expect

Reviewed 4 November 2026

You come in off the Stuart Highway on sealed Gorge Road, 30km from Katherine, and the road ends at the Nitmiluk Centre — the park's information hub, with a café, souvenir shop, cultural displays and the desk where you book boat tours, helicopter flights and canoe hire. Long-term parking is at the ranger station, and the walking network starts near the centre with a climb straight onto the rocky escarpment. Collect a Southern Walks map from the parks information desk before you set out; you will need it. The first real view is from Baruwei Lookout, 1.8km return and about an hour of walking, where the Katherine River shows itself as a chain of green pools between layered red sandstone walls. The Baruwei Loop carries on from there, 4.8km in total and two hours, dropping back past the river flats and the jetty where the gorge cruises load. Everything in the gorge sector starts within a few hundred metres of this one spot — the lookouts, the cruises, the canoe launch and the turn-offs for the long Southern Walks are all here.

Thirteen gorges sound like separate canyons, but the gorge is really one continuous cleft that turns left and right along fault lines, separated in the dry season by rock bars and rapids into the pools the cruise boats and canoes move between. Walls reach up to 70 metres, cut from red sandstone worn down over millennia. Freshwater crocodiles live along the river year-round — small, shy and generally content to leave you alone. Saltwater crocodiles are a different matter: they travel upstream when floodwaters surge, and rangers trap and relocate them as the dry season begins. Swimming closures follow that management, so check the park's status page before you plan a swim anywhere in the river.

The park holds more than 100km of walking tracks and they are graded honestly: the Baruwei Loop is Grade 3 over two hours, Butterfly Gorge is 12km return and 4.5 hours, Lily Ponds is 21.1km return and 6.5 hours at Grade 4, and the multi-day routes push out from there to Eighth Gorge at 38.5km return and the Waleka Walk at 14km one way. Markers appear every 20 to 50 metres; if you walk 100 metres without seeing one, go back to the last marker rather than pressing on. Sections of the Southern Walks are shared with mountain bikes. Water tanks sit at some junctions — Baruwei, Windolf, Butterfly Gorge, Lily Ponds — but not everywhere.

The park's other section, Leliyn (Edith Falls), sits 90km away by road, 60km north of Katherine off the Stuart Highway, and it works differently from the gorge. Here the river spills over red rock ledges into a large plunge pool below and an upper pool above, and swimming in both is the point — this is the most reliable place in the park to get wet. A kiosk serves hot and cold food, drinks, ice creams and basic supplies, with picnic tables, gas barbecues, toilets and showers near the carpark, and an electric pool lift helps people with limited mobility reach the lower pool; you collect the battery from the kiosk. The Leliyn Trail is a 2.6km loop, an hour and Grade 3, crossing the river to the main pool and taking in two lookouts. Wildlife is everywhere on the rocks: rockhole frogs sit on wet sandstone near the upper pool, and the bird list runs to ospreys, red-tailed black cockatoos, great bowerbirds, white-gaped honeyeaters and red-winged parrots, with endangered Gouldian finches in the Yinberrie Hills Important Bird Area that partly lies within the park.

Which parts of all this you can actually use depends on the month. Gorge 1 is permanently closed to swimming and canoeing. Swimming and private canoeing in the gorges above it close through the wet season and typically reopen around June, along with the gorge canoe campgrounds and the Jatbula Trail. Some named tracks also close for short periods for feral animal control programs, so check the park's status page in the week before you travel. The cultural weight of the place is not seasonal: Jawoyn paintings are recorded on sandstone walls across the park and the Jawoyn Valley walk passes painting galleries. The Jawoyn Association's message to visitors is simple — walk gently on this land and respect its stories.