Just add water

No crocs ... immersion therapy at 17 Mile Falls camp.Credit: Louise Southerden

I'm sitting barefoot beside a rushing stream, having discarded my pack and kicked off my hiking boots as soon as we'd arrived at camp. My hair is dripping down my back after a swim, my skin feels cool for the first time today, the blazing sun has left the sky. While our two guides boil the billy and prepare dinner, my fellow hikers and I retreat into our own private Idahos to daydream and unravel city-tangled minds, as day becomes night.

It's the afternoon of day one and we've walked only 2½ hours from the head of the trail, yet here we are, alone in the wilderness, feeling as far away as possible from the rest of the human race.

We're on the Jatbula Trail, which meanders along the Arnhem Land escarpment from Katherine Gorge to Leliyn (Edith Falls), across the south-western corner of Nitmiluk National Park. Formerly known as Katherine Gorge National Park, it became Nitmiluk ("place of the cicada") 20 years ago, on September 10, 1989, when the Jawoyn won a land claim case they'd lodged in the 1970s.

Now the trail is jointly managed by the Jawoyn Aboriginal Association and the Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory. It was created in the 1980s but last year underwent extensive track work, which means it's now poised to shrug off its reputation as one of the Top End's best-kept secrets to become one of Australia's signature walks, perhaps on a par with the famed Larapinta Trail.

That first day, and the second, too, is a baptism of fire, so to speak. The heat is so intense that sweat drips down my forehead, the salt stinging my eyes as I walk. I drink water almost constantly but it seeps out of my skin; whenever I stop and take off my pack, I notice I'm drenched. This is how it is: you walk, you sweat, you walk some more.

The Jatbula is not a difficult track: you walk an average of 10 kilometres a day for six days and most of it is fairly level; it rises a maximum of 220 metres across its entire length (the height of the escarpment relative to the surrounding country). But two things make it challenging: that heat, which feels significant when you've just fled the winter in one of the southern states; and the fact that this is an expedition-style trek, so everyone carries a pack weighing up to 15 kilograms.

The only thing that keeps me going these first two days is the cool promise of immersion in a freshwater pool each night. The presence of water, so cleverly spaced along the trail, is one of the highlights of the Jatbula. At Crystal Falls, our campsite on day two, we spend almost an hour cooling off in waist-deep pools. Here we're pummelled by the rapids, rinsing our sweat-soaked clothes and chatting as if we're in a Turkish bath-house.

Who would have suspected there'd be so much water in a place that gets no rain for six months of the year? Not just fast-flowing cascades dancing over sun-baked rocks but gushing waterfalls 50 metres high that flow for the entire dry season (such as 17 Mile Falls, where we camp on day three), muddy marshes and swamps that would look more at home in Tasmania and swimming holes - my personal favourite - such as the aptly named Sweetwater Pool, which is as long as two deep, green Olympic pools.

There is one rule about swimming in the Top End, by the way: pools on top of the escarpment, which stretches 1000 kilometres north-south like an inland coastline, are safe to swim in because crocodiles can't climb up to them. Pools at the base of waterfalls that pour off the escarpment are less safe; there's no telling if saltwater crocs are there. The Jatbula Trail, blessed with swimming holes at every camp, is doubly blessed - all its pools are on top of the escarpment.

Fewer than 500 people walk the Jatbula each year, partly because it's not yet well known and partly because numbers are kept to a sustainable minimum: the trail is open only during the dry season and can be walked only in one direction, starting at Katherine Gorge; and only 10 people are permitted at each campsite on any one night. All of which enhances the sense of being far away, which is especially acute at night and especially at bedtime.

Because there's no rain during the dry season and no need to shelter from the elements, we sleep under mozzie nets suspended from a rope tied between trees. What they lack in privacy, the nets more than make up for with a view - the night sky is our bedroom ceiling. Nothing beats waiting for sleep by gazing up at the stars beyond the shapes made by the trees.

We usually walk for most of the day and, although we take long breaks and never feel pressed for time, the walking takes a little getting used to. Steve, one of our guides, encourages us to enjoy the walking for its own sake, instead of seeing it as a means of getting somewhere - easier than it sounds in a region as varied as this.

It's incredible how many different landscapes you can walk through in six days and how often the terrain changes, even when you're travelling on foot. We walk through open woodlands of bloodwoods and salmon gums, forests of Darwin woollybutt (a type of eucalypt so named because of the shaggy bark around its base, which protects the tree from fire), mosaics of burnt and unburnt country and fields of golden speargrass.

Grasslands are a dominant feature of the Top End landscape. And wherever there is grass in the Northern Territory, there are termites, Australia's native grazers (there are 70 species in the territory alone) and, of course, termite mounds. Some line the track like earthy garden gnomes; others, the most elaborate "cathedral" mounds, are architectural marvels up to six metres high.

"If we built one," Steve says, putting them in context, "it'd be eight city blocks wide, a kilometre high, fire- and flood-proof, and eco-friendly, and underneath there'd be a network of tunnels more complex than the London Underground."

The Jawoyn have hundreds of uses for termite mounds; they even use them as bush-ovens to bake kangaroos. Every day, in fact, we're reminded of the traditional owners of this land when Steve points out plants and animals they use, not just for bush tucker but for bush medicine (crushed green-ant nests make a zesty lime-flavoured tea that soothes sore throats, for example) and bush hardware (the bark from paperbark trees, he tells us, has 101 uses, from blankets and bandages to rafts for hunting crocodiles).

"One of the reasons I love this walk," he says, "is that I feel as if I'm walking in the footsteps of the people who have lived here for thousands of years. Even when I sit up on top of some rocks and look out over the country, there's a presence. You can feel them still here."

One morning, we stop for a break in the shade made by an outcrop of sandstone. Looking up, we see, under an overhang that has protected it for possibly thousands of years, a painting, in red ochre, of an elongated human figure sporting dreadlocks and six fingers on each hand (indicating someone practised in the dark arts, Steve explains). It's not hard to imagine a group of Jawoyn sitting in this very spot, using images like this one to illustrate the stories told.

The beauty of a walk like the Jatbula is that it gives you something of a backstage pass to places you would never otherwise see; places such as the Amphitheatre, one of the Northern Territory's most highly prized rock-art sites.

Two-and-a-half day's walk from Katherine Gorge, a metal staircase leads us down, away from the stone country we've been walking through and into a shady pocket of monsoon rainforest, a rarity in the Top End. Surrounded by enormous allosyncarpia trees, it's a fairy glen of clear pools and butterflies, trickling water and soft, dappled light. After eating our lunch sitting on fallen logs beside a stream, we scramble up the wooded slopes to a high curved wall adorned with paintings of emus, fish, turtles and, bizarrely, men with unusually large appendages (the Amphitheatre is a known fertility site).

On the morning of day four, we see buffalo hoofmarks, a sign that we have entered the northern part of the national park, known as buffalo country. Rangers cull the feral buffalo population before every trekking season but at camp that night, a Melbourne couple (two of the four people we see on the trail all week) tell us they were charged by a lone buffalo that afternoon.

We don't end up seeing any buffalo, or much wildlife, apart from birds - including blue-winged kookaburras, kestrels, northern lorikeets, rainbow bee-eaters and a dozen black cockatoos we startle one afternoon. One night, however, walking to the camp's composting toilet after dark, my torch beam falls on a cane toad, living proof of Steve's observation that the park's reptiles have been increasingly rare since the toads arrived in the Top End. "A few years ago, I'd see a python or a monitor lizard or a turtle every day of this trek," he says. "Now I'm lucky if I see one reptile in the whole week."

Spending six days in the bush changes you, inside and out. On the drive back to Darwin, after our last swim, at Leliyn, I feel clear-eyed and shaggy-haired. My legs are scratched and spotted with insect bites, my fingernails are dirty, my boots are muddy. I feel softer, happier, quieter than before we set off. Carrying a full pack turns out to be surprisingly liberating. It's not just about carrying everything you need for a week, I discover, it's about living simply and sharing the load (we all carry various elements of the week's supplies, though our guides carry the heavy pots and pans and the stove). More than anything, it's amazing the places your legs will take you.

The Jatbula Trail is destined to become a classic. It's already being touted as a kind of tropical Overland Track - it's a week-long, full-pack deal like the Tasmanian trek - but it has its own uniqueness as well. Just the fact that the Jatbula exists feels like an invitation: to strip back your life so it can fit in a backpack, to sleep every night under a snowdome of stars, to swim in water that's fresh enough to drink, to spend a week literally walking in the footsteps of people who have lived even more simply than this for thousands of years. And, after all that, to leave only footprints. If I were asked to do it again, my answer would be the same as it was before the walk, without hesitation: I accept.

Louise Southerden travelled courtesy of World Expeditions and Tourism NT.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

The 58km Jatbula Trail is in Nitmiluk National Park in the Top End. It can be walked in only one direction: from Katherine Gorge, 4½ hours' drive south of Darwin, to Leliyn (Edith Falls). The best time to go is the dry season, May-September. The trail is closed from October to April because of extreme heat and heavy rainfall that makes creek crossings dangerous. Virgin Blue flies to Darwin non-stop from Melbourne for $169 and from Sydney, with a change of aircraft at another city, for $229. Qantas has a fare from Melbourne of $332 with an aircraft change in Alice Springs, while Sydney passengers pay $227 for a non-stop flight. Jetstar also flies to Darwin non-stop from Sydney and Melbourne. Fares are one way, including tax.

Hiking there

World Expeditions runssix-day Jatbula Trail trips, departing from Darwin, in May to late August for $1795 a person. The cost includes two experienced guides, park entry fees, all meals, transfers from Darwin, sleeping mats and single mozzie nets. All food and camping equipment must be carried in, so trekkers have packs weighing up to 15 kilograms. Some pre-trip fitness training is recommended. Phone [phone] or see worldexpeditions.com.au.