The Northern Territory does two things better than almost anywhere else on earth: tropical wetlands teeming with wildlife, and the kind of desert silence that makes you lower your voice without meaning to. This June, in the heart of the dry season, we did both.

We began in Darwin with a sunset cruise over Mindil Beach and a wander through the night markets, then drove into Kakadu National Park the next morning. A wetlands cruise on the Yellow Water Billabong delivered crocodiles, jabirus and sea eagles within the first hour, and the ancient rock art galleries at Ubirr, some panels many thousands of years old, gave the whole region a sense of depth that’s hard to put into words. We watched the sun go down over the Arnhem Land escarpment from the top of Ubirr Rock, which is one of those views every visitor to Australia should see at least once.

From Kakadu we drove down to Katherine for a morning cruise through Nitmiluk Gorge, swimming in a couple of the gorge’s quieter pools before the heat properly set in, then flew south to the Red Centre.

Uluru changes the trip’s whole register. We stayed at Longitude 131°, which remains one of the most extraordinary hotels in the country, luxury tents with Uluru framed in the window, dinner under the stars at the Field of Light, and a private dawn viewing of the rock that needed no commentary at all. A guided base walk the next morning, with an Anangu guide sharing Tjukurpa stories along the way, added the cultural layer that makes Uluru so much more than a postcard. We finished at Kata Tjuta for a sunset that turned the whole valley orange, gold, then a deep, settling blue.

Wetlands to desert, crocodiles to ancient rock, the Territory in six days is a genuine journey through two completely different Australias, and somehow both feel essential.