Northern Territory
Northern Territory Geography & Climate
Geography
The Territory covers a sixth of Australia and holds about 250,000 people, which makes it one of the emptiest inhabited places on earth.
The Top End is monsoon tropics — floodplains, paperbark swamp and the great sandstone escarpment of Arnhem Land, which rises abruptly and carries rock art galleries occupied for tens of thousands of years.
The Red Centre is arid: the MacDonnell Ranges running east-west across it in parallel ridges, and beyond them the sand plains where Uluru and Kata Tjuta stand as isolated remnants of a far larger eroded formation. Uluru continues underground for several kilometres.
Between the two runs the Stuart Highway, 1,500 km of it, and very little else.
Climate Patterns
The Top End has a monsoon climate with two seasons. The dry, May to September, is warm, clear and pleasant. The wet, October to April, brings monsoon rain, humidity above 80%, spectacular electrical storms and cyclone risk.
Locals recognise a third season — the build-up, October to December — when the humidity arrives before the rain does and the heat is at its most oppressive.
The Red Centre is arid: summer days regularly above 40°C, winter days pleasant in the low twenties, and winter nights that fall below freezing. Visitors consistently underpack for desert cold.
Rainfall in the centre is low and erratic; when it does rain, the desert flowers within weeks.