Sunset at Darwin's Mindil Beach

The North of Australia is vast, unexplored and at times, dangerous! Certainly not for the faint hearted. However, travellers who do venture north will find themselves face to face with vast red deserts, enormous escarpements and waterfalls, tremoundous amounts of wildlife and tones of cliches to keep your camera and imagination reeling. Once here a new type of tourist is born, the Northern Territory tourist!

Bordered by the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Northern Territory is home to some of Australia's most significant icons and is a sancuary for all things natural. Despite its enormous size, the Norther Territory is sparsely populated with a population of about 230, 000 sharing an area of 1,349,129 square kilometres. Its Australia's third biggest state and the least populated.

Northern Territory tourist will find loads of Aboriginal culture here. Native Australian history in this part of Australia begins over 40,000 years ago! This has evident by thousands of ancient paintings, burial sites and other archeological findings scattered across the region. 

There are plenty of tiny settlements sprinkled across the territory, however the larger population centres are located on a single paved road that links Darwin to southern Australia, the Stuart Highway or also commonly known simply as "the track".

The NT has two distinctive climate zones.
The northern end, including Darwin, has a tropical climate with high humidity and two seasons, the wet (November to April) and dry season (May to October). During the dry season the Northern Territory Tourist will experiece warm and sunny days with cooling breezes and chilly nights. The afternoon humidity averages around 30% and there is very little rainfall. In the coolest months of June and July, the daily minimum temperature hovers at around 24 degrees.
The wet season is associated with tropical cyclones and monsoon rains.Most of the rainfall occurs between December and March. On average more than 1,570 mm of rain falls in the north. 
The central region of the Northern Territory is the desert centre of the country. This area includes Alice Springs and Ayers Rock, and is semi-arid with little rain.

Venturing across this vast landscape provides the Northern Territory tourist whith a chance to experience untamed wildlife and ancient cultural legacies, to hike through amazing rainforest or trek remote rocky gorges.