2025-09 The Top End

A new adventure with our friends Chis and Sara from Lymm. Our holiday began with 4 nights in Darwin, a city that we love for its relaxed atmosphere and interesting history. In all the photo galleries that follow, just click on a photo to enlarge it. That opens up various options such as captions and location of each photo.

Darwin has very pleasant Botanic Gardens and we had a delightful time wandering around them….again for Rob and Hazel but new for Chris and Sara

The map below shows all the locations that we visited in Arnhem Land and the Kimberley. They are shown as blue circles with a white tag.

After a few days relaxing in Darwin, the outback adventure really began with a flight to the Cobourg peninsula in northwest Arnhem Land. The route is shown on the map below.

The first day in Cobourg, we went out on the boat to do some fishing for dinner and visited the extremely atmospheric Victoria Settlement the third failed attempt by the British to settle the north of Australia to protect it against the French. The second day, we explored around the peninsula with our guide David McMahon who was to be our guide for the rest of the trip.

After Cobourg, we travelled through Arnhem Land to Gunbalanya a small largely Aboriginal settlement of just over a 1000 people. We then climbed Injalak hill with our aboriginal guide to see the rock art sites. The climb was quite steep, and it was a very warm day but all four of us managed it without incident. The art is amazing as you can see from the photos.

After Gunbalanya, we headed to the infamous Cahill’s crossing to cross the East Alligator River and enter Kakadu. The tide was high, and we saw lots of crocodiles as you can see in the photos.

We then entered Kakadu national park. We took a cruise on the extraordinary Yellow Waters Billabong which was absolutely teaming with life. The next day we travelled south via Pine Creek to Nitmiluk national park and took a cruise up Katherine Gorge.

After Katherine Gorge we travelled to Lake Argyle, Australia’s largest freshwater lake, and took a sunset cruise

After Lake Argle, we headed down to see the extraordinary geological marvel that is the Bungle Bungles.

We left the Bungle Bungles and headed for the iconic cattle station, now a tourist destination, of El Questro.

After El Questro, we travelled to Kununurra where we boarded a plane for our flight to Broome for a few days relaxation.

We then flew to Perth where we were to stay a night before flying to Japan. However, whilst having a day out in Freemantle, we were advised by Cathay Pacific that our flights to Japan, which were via Hong Kong, were cancelled due to Super Typhoon Ragasa, picture below. Chris and Sara were rerouted via Singapore and Tokyo that night, but Rob and Hazel had to wait a couple of days for their flights via Singapore and Bangkok.

So, Rob and Hazel spent a couple of nights in Freemantle which was not such a hardship but of course we missed 2 of the 3 days in Sapporo. After the long 3 flights to Japan, we were all reunited in Sapporo. The Japan trip will be detailed in a forthcoming post.