Discover Aboriginal history and a wilderness for bushwalking and mountain biking in Namadgi National Park.
As you explore the woodlands, forests, grasslands and peaks and heaths of Namadgi National Park, remember that Aboriginal people lived here during the last Ice Age more than 21,000 years ago.

The Ngunawal people camped amongst the Namadgi Ranges – part of the Australian Alps chain - when they were almost completely cloaked in snow. Today you’ll probably only see snow in winter, but over 50 sites with evidence of Ngunawal occupation remain. You’ll find old campsites with discarded fragments of stone and animal bone and quarry sites where stone was gathered for tool making. There are ceremonial stone arrangements in the high peaks and rock painting sites.

Aboriginal people retain a strong link with these bold granite outcrops in Namadgi National Park. Sitting south west of Canberra and taking up almost half of the Australian Capital Territory, the park also carries a rich record of European settlement.

You can trace the story of the first pastoralists in the 1830s fences, yards, huts and homesteads that remain in the broad valleys where they settled. See parts of the Kiandra gold trail that 1860s fortune seekers followed in Gudgenby. Visit old Apollo space tracking stations in the Orroral Valley and at Honeysuckle Creek - the first place on earth to receive images of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.

When you are done with history, Namadgi National Park is also a great place for communing with plants and animals unique to Australia’s alpine and sub-alpine environments. See the rare broad-tooth rat, northern corroboree frog and river blackfish. Watch the vegetation morph between grassy plains in the valleys to snowgum woodlands and alpine meadows on the mountain peaks. Soak up the fast-changing scenery on one of the many bushwalks or on a mountain bike. Or sharpen your appreciation with a shot of adrenalin going horseriding, paragliding, sky diving, abseiling, caving or canyoning. 

If you’d like a gentler pace, go bird watching, fishing, camp overnight and enjoy a picnic with spectacular views. You can get away from it all and see some of the Alps' most beautiful scenery in the rugged Bimberi wilderness, accessible from Mount Ginini or the Yerrabi Walking Track.

Namadgi still brims with cultural and natural resources more than 20,000 years after its first inhabitants made it home.