Alice Springs to Mataranka

We've had a great week here in the Northern Territory. We have definitely packed the winter woolies away and are living in shorts & singlets. It is hot and dry, but now we are officially in the 'Top End' rather than the 'Red Centre' it's much more green and we are now surrounded by large trees, including palm trees which make us feel like we've left the desert behind for at least a little while.

We have not seen a single cloud in the sky for almost two weeks. Not one single little white fluffy cloud.

We met a lovely family from Victoria when we were staying in Alice Springs and as we have been travelling in the same direction as them, have basically been travelling together for the last 4/5 days. It's great for the kids to have other kids to play with as they have 3 kids at very similar ages to ours. It's also nice to have other adults to share happy hour with!

In Alice we visited their cultural precinct. The highlight was the aviation museum with lots of old restored planes, some of which you could climb in. The kids really enjoyed looking around and sitting in an older plane- they agreed that they looked far too flimsy to fly!

After leaving Alice and saying good-bye to the rather luxurious (by camping standards) Big 4 Holiday Park, we headed north to Devil's Marbles for a one night stay. It was bigger than we expected with a large area of huge boulders all stacked on top of each other. The best thing is you could walk through them and climb all over them so the kids had a great time with their new friends discovering the Marbles and doing some amateur rock climbing. Chris got the good camera out at night and got creative with some great shots of the Marbles at dark.


Devil's Marbles

 

 

 

The Marbles at night lit up by our red torch while taking a long exposure photo

We haven't been doing much school work- very very little in fact. I am not too concerned as they are learning so much being out & about in the world and they're asking so many questions, but they have to do something soon as we've carted all these books half way around the country!

After Devils Marbles we had another long drive, this time to Daly Waters Pub. They have done a great job of turning a basic country pub into a destination all in itself. You could easily drive the extra hour to get into Mataranka but I'd heard good things about the place so we stopped for the night. It's a basic campground, cheap as chips, but they get you in to have dinner and drinks in the pub. The pub is a real institution- it's one of those pubs where people leave things behind- hundreds & hundreds of I.D. cards, hundreds of bras, hundreds of thongs- you get the picture. It has a nice courtyard with a stage where a local character plays guitar and sings Aussie songs and recites poetry while you enjoy happy hour and wait for you 'beef & barra' meal to be cooked on the BBQ. We had a fun night out.

Next day we're off to Mataranka which is known for two things- it's the location for the book & movie 'We of the Never Never' and its also got hot springs where you can soak all your aches away. The water is clear as the thermal spring pumps out a huge amount of water which is constantly replenishing the pools and keeping it a constant temperature of 32-34 Celcius. We visited Bitter Springs last night which is walking distance from our campground and drove to Mataranka Springs this morning which is 7km away. Both worth a visit, especially early or late in the day when the tour buses have gone home and it's a bit more peaceful.






Mataranka Thermal Pool

Bitter Springs Thermal Pool

After a two day stop here, tomorrow we will head to Katherine, only 100km north of here. We will visit Katherine Gorge and probably do a cruise down the river. We've in croc territory now so no swimming unless the signs say it's a safe swimming zone- or we stay at a park with a swimming pool!

One interesting thing we have found is the lack of kangaroos- both alive & on the side of the road. Caitlin spotted a baby wallaby this morning on the walk to the hot pools, but the wildlife is few & far between. Probably because they are out at dawn & dusk which is when we avoid driving. The quality of the road is better than we both expected too. You can travel further, easier and faster than we thought as the roads are well sealed and STRAIGHT for most of the way. We have seen a few more crazy cyclists on the Stuart Highway riding along with their panniers for what must be hundreds and hundreds of kilometres in over 30 degree heat. Someone we met in Alice said they had befriended an 18 year old guy who was riding around Australia on his own with a bike he made himself equipped with a solar panel roof shelter and other mod cons. What ingenuity for an 18 year old! His mother must be beside herself though. We will keep an eye out for him and give him a cold drink if we see him. He's apparently heading in our direction.

Hope you're enjoying the blog- it will be a good record of our trip when we look back on it in the future. I'll try to get Chris and the girls to do some posts too as Chris is taking some amazing photos and the girls would love to write to their school friends.