Nitmiluk Gorge is a 20 minute drive from the town of Katherine and is part of Nitmiluk National Park. There is a visitor centre and cafe there – but more importantly there is also a large colony of little red flying foxes ‘hanging out’ in the same area.

The national park has a large network of walking trails providing different access points to views over the gorge. We planned our day as one long loop walk – combining a few of the trails to take in as many of the view points of the gorge as possible (according to our walking speed and the need for photo stops and a lunch break)

The route that we took (with cumulative distance) was as follows: Visitor Centre (start), Baruwei Lookout (1km), Butterfly Gorge (7km), Jedda’s Rock (10km), Pat’s Lookout (11km), Visitor Centre (16km). We started walking at 9am and by 4.30pm we were back at the visitor centre.

Along with the good views, there was plenty of wildlife-spotting – we saw our first ever silver-crowned friarbird, and also managed to spot the elusive black-palmed rock monitor.