Visiting the Margaret Knoll Lookout on Christmas Island

jana meerman margaret knoll lookout christmas island-13

The Margaret Knoll Lookout is a short walk through the jungle and up a series of steps to one of the best bird-watching platforms on the island.

In my mission to visit every country and territory in the world (a total standing at 269), I sometimes end up booking trips to visit some of the world's most remote places and undertaking serious bucket-list worthy adventures.

We are basing ourselves in Australia for a year, traveling around the country in a campervan. Given it's the biggest country in Oceania, it's also the perfect opportunity to visit some of the many islands surrounding it across the Indian and South Pacific Oceans.

I spent six weeks backpacking around Australia back in 2019, one of my first solo adventures and my first on a one-way ticket. During my two years I would end up living down under, mostly based out of New Zealand, I also visited Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Samoa, scratching the surface of these fascinating island nations dotting great expanses of open ocean.

When mapping out the rough corners of our year-ish down under, planning to land in Sydney at the beginning of October, I realized it would be the perfect timing to fly out to Christmas Island six weeks later from Perth. Primarily to witness the world famous red crab migration, we spent a week on Christmas Island and explored all the other things to do on the island aside from looking for crabs.

→ Check out my complete guide to witnessing the red crab migration!

How to Get to Margaret Knoll Lookout

For information on how to get to Christmas Island, check out my complete guide to visiting the island. Below I have outlined the specific information for reaching the Margaret Knoll Lookout:

By car: The main way to get around Christmas Island is with a 4WD as most of the roads on the island are unsealed, including the one to Margaret Knoll Lookout. The exact location of the lookout is here on Google Maps; the free parking lot is about 100 metres before the lookout. Be sure to watch out for red crabs when driving through the jungle.

By bike: Christmas Island Tourism does suggest that you can explore the island by bike if you don't drive or don't want to. I would probably not suggest this unless you have a great mountain bike for off-road terrain only because the road to the lookout is pretty rough and essentially a dirt track through the jungle.

On foot: You could hike all the way to the Margaret Knoll Lookout; it's about 10km each way from Flying Fish Cove (the main town on the island) with only about 350m of elevation gain.

There is no public transport on Christmas Island and it is strongly recommended that all visitors rent a 4WD to explore the island with.

Visiting Margaret Knoll Lookout

The Margaret Knoll Lookout is considered one of the best places to go bird-watching on Christmas Island. Perfectly situated on the eastern coast, you walk through the jungle on a boardwalk and up some steps - recently renovated in 2023 in a multi-million dollar upgrade project - to reach a lookout platform.

From here, you are perched high above the national park and the exquisite trees below and out to the Indian Ocean in the background. Frigates, bosuns and boobies fly through and above the trees and it's a privilege to capture them on camera.

Signs posted along the short walk from the parking lot also point out Christmas Island's critically endangered endemic fern. You'll probably also spot red crabs in and amongst the limestone!

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Jana Meerman

Hi! I’m Jana, a Dutch-German-British-Canadian with a dream of seeing every country in the world. I am a storyteller, photographer and adventurer passionate about documenting and sharing my travels.

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