Katherine is the gateway to one of the natural wonders of the Top End: Nitmiluk, the system of thirteen gorges that the Katherine River has carved into the sandstone over millions of years. Formerly known as Katherine Gorge, these red and orange gorges plunge up to 70 metres to still water below. They are the heart of Nitmiluk National Park, a place of breathtaking beauty and, above all, of deep spiritual meaning for the Jawoyn people, its Traditional Owners. The Jawoyn won back legal ownership of the land in 1989 and now co-manage it.
Exploring Nitmiluk on a cruise, paddling a canoe between the rock walls or flying over it in a helicopter is one of Australia's unforgettable experiences. The name itself tells a story. 'Nitmiluk' means 'place of the cicada', because Nabilil, the ancestral crocodile being who created these lands in the Dreaming, camped at the mouth of the gorge and heard the cicada's song: 'Nit! Nit! Nit!'. Every gorge and every rock has its own story in Jawoyn law.
This guide covers the essentials and practical details of Katherine and Nitmiluk: what to do (two- or three-gorge cruises, canoeing, Edith Falls, Cutta Cutta Caves), how to get there and get around, what the cruises and the NT parks pass cost, when to go in the dry or the wet, and how to visit with respect for Jawoyn culture. Katherine is also an outback crossroads, with hot springs, telegraph history and a taste of outback Australia.
Katherine and the Nitmiluk gorges are the ancestral Country of the Jawoyn people. For them, the landscape was created in the Dreaming (burr) by Nabilil, the ancestral crocodile who named each place. 'Nitmiluk' means 'place of the cicada'. The Dagoman, Wardaman and Warlpiri peoples also lived in the area. Europeans arrived with the explorer John McDouall Stuart (who named the Katherine River in 1862), the Overland Telegraph Line in 1872 and cattle stations such as Springvale (1879), the oldest surviving station in the NT. In a landmark for Aboriginal land rights, the Jawoyn people won back ownership of Nitmiluk in 1989 and lease it to Parks NT under joint management. In 1998 a major flood covered the town. The full story is on our history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Some places have names that are, in themselves, a whole story. 'Nitmiluk' is one of them. In the language of the Jawoyn people, traditional owners of these gorges, the word is made up of 'nitmi' (the song of the cicada) and 'luk' (place): Nitmiluk is 'the place of the cicada'. And behind that name lies one of the most beautiful creation stories in the Northern Territory.
According to Jawoyn law, in the primordial time of creation, which they call 'burr', the landscape of the Katherine River gorges was shaped by Nabilil, an ancestral being in the form of a crocodile. Nabilil came from the sea carrying his firestick and travelled inland, crossing the lands of other peoples, the Dagoman and the Nangiomeri, until he reached the mouth of the great gorge. There, at the entrance, he made camp and, in the stillness, heard the song of the cicada: 'Nit! Nit! Nit! Nit!'. Because of that song, he called this place Nitmiluk. As he moved through the country, Nabilil named each feature of the landscape in the Jawoyn language, giving it existence and meaning. For the Jawoyn, the land is not a natural backdrop: it is the work and the body of their creator ancestors.
Nabilil is not alone in this spiritual world. Bula, another powerful ancestral being, travelled these lands, leaving his image painted in rock shelters (paintings that can still be seen in the park today) and establishing dangerous, sacred places that must be treated with great respect. There are also Boolong, the Rainbow Serpent, and Barraya, the kookaburra, among others. The whole gorge system is crossed by songlines, story-paths that describe the journeys of the creation beings, the origin of each rock formation and the rules for living on Country. For the Jawoyn people, entering Nitmiluk means entering a sacred text that is read with the eyes, the feet and the songs.
The Jawoyn have lived in this part of the Katherine region for tens of thousands of years, and their land stretches east of today's town, from Lansdowne to the southern edge of Kakadu, taking in Nitmiluk, Barunga, Beswick and part of south-western Arnhem Land. But they were not the only ones: the Katherine area was, and still is, a crossroads of peoples. Alongside the Jawoyn lived the Dagoman, the Wardaman and, further south, the Warlpiri, each with their own language, Country and ceremonial responsibilities. The Katherine River, with its permanent water in a land of relentless dry seasons, was a hub of life, meeting and exchange.
The life of these peoples followed the rhythm of the monsoon seasons: the abundance of the wet, when the river rises and everything turns green again, and the scarcity of the dry, when water gathers in the waterholes and gorges. They hunted, fished, gathered plants for food and medicine, and looked after the landscape with fire, carrying out controlled burns of the savanna to regenerate it, a land management practice that science now recognises as sophisticated. The Nitmiluk gorges were not just any place: as well as a source of food and water, they were (and are) a site of great ceremonial significance, with sacred and dangerous areas linked to Bula that only certain people may visit, or that must be kept at a distance.
That deep knowledge of Country, passed down over millennia through law, song and painting, is what Jawoyn guides now share (the part that is public) with visitors who travel through the gorges by boat or canoe. When a Jawoyn guide points to a rock painting or tells the story of Nabilil's journey, they are not reciting folklore: they are passing on living knowledge that their people have protected against all the odds.
The arrival of Europeans on the Katherine is part of one of Australia's great colonial epics: the crossing of the continent from south to north. In 1862, Scottish explorer John McDouall Stuart, on his sixth and successful attempt to cross Australia from Adelaide to the north coast, reached a river with permanent water and named it 'Katherine' after the daughter of one of his sponsors. That name, given by a passing outsider, ended up prevailing over the age-old Nitmiluk for the town that would later be born.
Stuart's route paved the way for the project that would transform the north: the Overland Telegraph Line, which in 1872 linked Adelaide with Darwin and, via undersea cable, connected all of Australia to the rest of the world. Katherine became a point on that vital line: as early as 1870 there was a hut at the river crossing, owned by one Barney Murphy, and once the telegraph station was set up in 1872 the population began to grow. A settlement gradually took shape around the telegraph and the river crossing.
After the telegraph came cattle, which would define the region's economy. In 1879 Springvale Homestead was built, run by Alfred Giles, a former labourer on the telegraph line; it is the oldest surviving original homestead in the whole Northern Territory. As elsewhere in northern Australia, the spread of the big cattle stations over Aboriginal land came at an enormous cost to the Jawoyn and the other peoples: dispossession, frontier violence, disease and, over time, the 20th-century policies of control and assimilation that tore families and communities apart. Many Aboriginal people ended up working as labourers, often unpaid, on the very stations that occupied their Country. Colonial Katherine grew, but on top of a deep wound.
The 20th century brought Katherine its share of dramatic history. Like the rest of the Top End, the region experienced the Second World War up close: after the bombing of Darwin in 1942, Katherine was also attacked from the air by Japanese aircraft (the southernmost point on the Australian mainland hit by Japanese bombs) and became an important military base, with airfields and a large troop presence. The war left behind infrastructure, roads and a mark that the town still remembers, including the local museum, housed in the old aerodrome.
But if one episode is etched into Katherine's memory, it is the floods. The river that gives the town life is also its greatest threat. In the wet season, monsoon rains can make the Katherine swell enormously. The worst disaster came in January 1998, when Tropical Cyclone Les dumped torrential rain over the catchment and the river burst its banks, peaking at 20.4 metres and flooding the entire town and an area of around 1,000 square kilometres around it. The town was left under water, with thousands evacuated, homes and businesses ruined and damage that took years to repair. It was a brutal reminder that in the Top End life runs to the rhythm of the monsoon, and there were other major floods in later years.
Over the course of the century, Katherine established itself as the transport hub of the inland north: the junction of the Stuart Highway (north-south) and the Victoria Highway (towards Western Australia), a stop on the railway, and the service centre for a huge region of cattle stations and Aboriginal communities. A small but strategic town, with the flavour and the toughness of deep Australia, where the outback meets the Top End.
Katherine's recent history has a bright chapter that sets it apart and is a source of pride for the Jawoyn people: the legal return of the gorges. For decades, 'Katherine Gorge National Park' was run by the government as just another park, without recognising its true owners. That changed thanks to the Aboriginal land rights movement that shook Australia in the second half of the 20th century. In 1989, after years of claims and a legal process under the Northern Territory's land rights legislation, ownership of the park was officially handed back to the Jawoyn people.
The agreement was historic and groundbreaking: the Jawoyn, now the legal owners, leased the park to the NT parks agency (Parks NT) so that it could be jointly managed as a national park, now under its own name, Nitmiluk. It was one of the first major examples in Australia of 'hand back and lease back', a model in which nature conservation sits alongside the ownership and the voice of First Peoples. Since then, the Jawoyn have not only owned the park but have also played an active part in managing it and have built their own tourism businesses: Nitmiluk Tours, which runs the cruises, canoes and flights, is Jawoyn-owned, and the elegant Cicada Lodge is also a community project. Tourism at Nitmiluk generates jobs and income that flow back to the people.
This gives a visit to Nitmiluk special value. It is not just any park with a sign about 'the Aboriginal people of the past': it is land that has been reclaimed, managed by its living owners, where visitors' money supports the community that has cared for this place for tens of thousands of years. Travelling through the gorges while a Jawoyn guide tells the story of Nabilil's journey, seeing Bula's paintings on the rock and knowing that this Country is back in the hands of its people turns the trip into more than a postcard. Today, Katherine and Nitmiluk show that colonial history can, at least in part, begin to be repaired. And the song of the cicada still rings out, just as it did when Nabilil first heard it.
