Top End Loop: Kakadu, Katherine and Litchfield - Apollo

Nine nights and 1,000 kilometres in a loop from Darwin in a campervan, round three of the Top End parks with a stay day in each.

Kakadu comes first, nearly twenty thousand square kilometres of wetland, escarpment and stone country, with rock art at Ubirr and Nourlangie that has been painted and repainted over tens of thousands of years, and the billabong cruises going out among the crocodiles at first light.

Katherine follows, where Nitmiluk is a series of thirteen sandstone gorges cut by the river and walked or paddled in sections, with a stay day there. Litchfield comes next with another, where the waterfalls drop off a sandstone plateau into plunge pools that are safe to swim in, which Kakadu’s are not, and the magnetic termite mounds stand aligned north to south on the flats. Berry Springs closes the loop, a swimming hole half an hour from the city.

The camper and the day-by-day plan come from Apollo, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Ten days for a thousand kilometres is a slow pace and the route is designed for a two-wheel drive, which rules out some of the Kakadu side roads: Jim Jim and Twin Falls both need a four-wheel drive and a river crossing. The dry season from May to October is the window, since the wet floods roads across the park. Swimming anywhere in the Top End needs local advice and the signage read carefully because of the crocodiles.