​Top 10 things to do around Katherine

3. Enjoy an authentic cultural experience

Join a two-hour cultural experience with local Aboriginal man Manuel Pamkal at Top Didj in Katherine. Learn the Rarrk painting (cross hatch) technique and paint your own artwork to take home. You’ll learn how to light a fire from sticks and try your hand at throwing a boomerang and a spear. Afterwards, wander through the Katherine Art Gallery, which has one of the area’s best Aboriginal art collections.

4. Try the Katherine Outback Experience

Join award-winning country music artist and horseman Tom Curtain for this 90-minute show that will give you a taste of life on a real outback Australian cattle station. Watch Tom break-in a wild horse and see how his clever working dogs muster cattle. During the show, Tom performs his country music and tells colourful stories about the bush.

5. Explore Elsey National Park

Dip your toe in Australian literary history at Elsey National Park, an hour’s drive south of Katherine, best known as the setting for the Australian novel We of the Never Never. Soak in the warm turquoise water of nearby Mataranka Thermal Pool, surrounded by pandanus, paperbarks and palm forest. Then take the walk into Bitter Springs, another spring-fed thermal pool set among palms and tropical woodlands.

6. Go underground at the Cutta Cutta Caves

Take the winding boardwalk down through the Cutta Cutta Caves, one of Australia’s only tropical limestone cave systems, a short drive south of Katherine. See fascinating stalactites of all shapes and sizes sprouting from the ceiling and crystals that look like spun sugar adorning the walls. The caves shelter the rare ghost bat and horseshoe bat. Guided one-hour tours run daily.

7. Relax in the Katherine Hot Springs

After a busy day exploring, relax your muscles in the clear water of Katherine Hot Springs on the banks of the Katherine River, just outside the Katherine township. Take the raised walking path to a viewing platform where you can see the source of the spring water, which is a constant average of 32°C —perfect for swimming in all year round.

8. Discover old treasures

Housed in an original World War II air terminal, the charming Katherine Museum preserves a wide and eclectic collection of Aboriginal artefacts, photographs, furniture, maps, tools and pioneer memorabilia. See the Overland Telegraph display of objects dating back to 1872, the planetarium made by a Russian peanut farmer and the first flying doctor, Dr Clyde Fenton’s De Havilland Gypsy Moth plane he flew in the 1930s.

9. Find the perfect souvenir at Mimi Aboriginal Arts & Crafts

Buy Aboriginal art ethically at Katherine’s Mimi Aboriginal Art and Craft, an Aboriginal-owned, not-for-profit art centre. Paintings star in this excellent gallery, which represents artists in the vast Katherine region of 380,000km². There’s a range of locally designed luggage items as well as didgeridoos, wooden plates, boomerangs, fabric pieces and postcards. The gallery is named after the Mimi Spirits, an important part of Aboriginal beliefs.

10. Take your seat under the stars for a real Aussie dinner

Dine under the stars on a true Aussie bush tucker dinner at Marksie’s Stockman’s Camp, in the grounds of the Katherine Art Gallery. Meet ‘Marksie’, a true Territory character whose stories will have you in stitches. Enjoy a traditional camp oven meal by the camp fire and be entertained by great Aussie humour, a campfire sing-along, a ‘damper on a stick’ (the bush version of an ice-cream) and a billy spinning competition.