Arnhem Highway

The road

The Arnhem Highway from Darwin to Jabiru is not a driver's road in the traditional sense. There are no corners worth noting, no elevation changes and no dramatic scenery in the way that southern Australia understands dramatic. What it does have is genuine Top End character: the floodplains of the Mary River system flooded and mirrored in the wet season, baked red and teeming with wildlife in the dry. The road runs straight and flat across the floodplains for most of its length, with the distant Arnhem Land escarpment growing slowly larger on the horizon. The magic is in the details - termite mounds six metres tall, magpie geese in their thousands on the floodplains, the quality of light in the early morning. Jabiru is a purpose-built mining town inside the Kakadu National Park boundary, which means the park starts before the town does. This drive is about arriving at Kakadu, not about the road. But arriving by road through country like this is very different to arriving by plane.

The region

The Top End of the Northern Territory is monsoonal tropical country - 100 millimetres of rain in the dry season, 1,400 in the wet, all of it falling between November and April. The landscape through which the Arnhem Highway passes is the Mary River floodplain system, home to one of the highest concentrations of saltwater crocodiles in Australia. Kakadu National Park at the end of the road is a World Heritage area covering 20,000 square kilometres, with Aboriginal rock art sites over 20,000 years old.

Before you go

Fuel at Darwin and Jabiru. The highway floods during the wet season (November to April) and can be cut for days or weeks at a time. Dry season only for a reliable trip. Saltwater crocodiles are in all waterways - do not swim or stand at the water's edge anywhere on this route. Wildlife on the road at night is genuinely dangerous. Dawn and dusk driving on outback roads is not recommended.

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