To Katherine and Mataranka

We left our accommodation at Pandanus on Litchfield yesterday morning, stopping for a coffee at the Litchfield Outback Resort on the way out of Batchelor. We were hoping they made their coffees as well as they bar-b-qued their steaks (as Rob had experienced the night before - a real Territory sized helping - along with a pint of Guinness - as you do in the Outback!). 

But we found they made their steaks far better than they made their coffees unfortunately!

Katherine is a bit less than 3 hours drive (250klm) south of Batchelor - on a good road with a 130klm speed limit - but single lane, so the big road trains and the big old RVs can slow you down at times.  Anyway we got to Katherine a bit before midday with a few hours to kill before we could check into our accommodation. We got good advice from the Information Centre and headed straight to the Katherine "Hot Springs" on the banks of the Katherine River and only a 5 minute drive from the centre of town for our first outing here.

Rob took a pic of our hire car (a pretty new MG) parked up against a fence of brilliant flowering bougainvillea  at the "Hot Springs" car park.

I avoided taking a picture with people in it but this was a popular spot at lunchtime - there were dozens of people around enjoying the "hot springs" today (water around 34oC - and croc free!).

We are enjoying some lighter lunches now we're on our own compared to all the gourmet tucker we enjoyed and overfed ourselves with on the Outback Spirit tour.

Afterwards we visited this beautiful, contemporary gallery a little south of town, on the Stuart Highway.

There was an exhibition of work from the Warringarri Art Centre - a collaboration with our own National Gallery of Australia, but I was most taken with this small exhibition of traditional shell dolls representing clan groups of the Groote Archipelago - handcrafted by Anindilyakwa women. The gallery, and the quality of the work in it, out here in Katherine, came as a real surprise to me.

We are very happy with our accommodation - new, architect designed (flood and cyclone proof) cabins at Discovery Park on Gorge Road - a few klms out of town and in a lovely setting with trees around and lots of birdlife.

It was lovely sitting on our little bush verandah last night, with a beer, watching the sun set .......

... and the full moon rise .........

Today, we set out for Mataranka, about an hour and a quarter drive south of Katherine on the Stuart Highway. Mataranka is only a small town - made famous by the novel "We of the Never Never" by Jeannie Gunn. The book - a memoir - is about Jeannie's time at nearby Elsey Station in the early days of the 20th century. I remember reading the book as a young person and talking about it with my dear old Aunty Ivy who loved the book I remember - no doubt because so much of it mirrored her mother's and grandmother's experiences (in outback Queensland) too.

Mataranka has the quirkiest little museum (mostly all outdoors) attached to its tiny public library documenting its early pastoral and wartime history. It cost $3 admission (cash only) - and was the best value $3 of the whole trip I would say!

We drove the short distance then out to the Mataranka Thermal Pool on the Roper River, stopping to take a look at the Elsey Homestead on the way. The building is a replica, built in the 1980s for the film adaptation of the "We of the Never Never" novel. The timbers on this replica homestead are still looking pretty strong although you can see a lot of damage from the recent devastating wet season floods when you look closely.

The Mataranka fan palms, unique to this part of Australia, form a lush cooling forest around the thermal springs of Elsey National Park.

It was like Bondi Beach at the thermal pool today - RV rigs crowding the car park - crowds of people and families all with their pool noodles enjoying the 34oC free flowing water. 

This popular pool is fed continuously by this Rainbow Spring. The water is so crystal clear it looks this distinctive azure blue to the eye - amazing!! It's also not strictly a "thermal pool". The water rises up from a deep underground aquifer and it's heated by the earth's natural temperature (around 340C all year.)

We did a lovely, easy 3klm loop walk past the main thermal pool along the Waterhouse River to "Stevie's Hole".

We enjoyed a picnic lunch at nearby Bitter Springs - a much more open area for swimming, fringed by paperbark and fan palm forests.

Once again Bitter Springs was as crowded as Bondi Beach today (despite my carefully composed photos). There are absolutely no facilities at these hot spring swimming areas so the car parks are chock a block with people in their big RV rig set ups (most with boats) so they can get changed, make lunch, get a drink etc etc and make a day of it by these oasis like swimming holes. 

At least there was one (very smelly) drop toilet at Bitter Springs. The toilet at the Mataranka Springs was a bit more high tech but it was a good distance away from where people were swimming.

We made it back to Katherine by a bit after 4pm this afternoon. Its a no frills kinda town and not one we find inviting to stay awhile. Over half of the population here is Aboriginal but its a town definitely run by the whites. There are security grills up everywhere and a strong police presence. I had to show my ID to a cop when I went shopping for a carton of zero alcohol beer at the BWS in town yesterday. So different to where we've been in Arnhem Land where the Aboriginal population is in the majority, has Native Title of the land, and sets the rules!

Aside from all that ......being in Woolies, surrounded by long legged Aboriginal girls - as black as - all speaking in language loud as you like - is a pretty special and amazing Katherine experience too!