Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge)

Declared in 1989 and handed back to the ownership of the Jawoyn people in 1989 under a lease-back arrangement with the Northern Territory government for joint management — a model much like Uluru's — Nitmiluk protects thirteen gorges cut by the Katherine river into sandstone 1,600 million years old, one of the oldest exposed geological formations in Australia. The Jawoyn name Nitmiluk refers to the story of the ancestral being Nabilil, whose song, by tradition, can still be heard in the echo of the gorge walls through the wet season.