MATARANKA, the never never, hot springs, crocs and birds.

Early morning in Daly Waters was a particularly busy time.  It’s amazing just how quickly many caravan parks empty out just about every morning. To those like us that have a leisurely start to the day it’s common to be some of the very few left in the park by 9am.

Once on the road, the trip through to Mataranka was uneventful and at only about 160Km, a very short journey for once.

Mataranka is well known as the site of Elsey Station of “We of the Never Never” fame, the book written by ‘Mrs Aeneas Gunn’ – Jeannie Gunn who joined her husband on Elsey station in the early 1900s - a time when there were very few white women in the remote areas of the Territory. We visited the site of Elsey Station and the graves of Aeneas Gunn and many of the characters from the book. Bett Bett, “the little black princess” has quite a large memorial there – she lived to be 95 and died in Darwin in 1988.

Mataranka is best known these days as the site of the hot springs and there are now two established sites to enjoy the experience, the first on the southern side and the second at Bitter Springs on the north side of the town. Both have appropriate infrastructure to make it easy, paved paths for access and steps to get in and out. The southern site also has a covered path to protect visitors from droppings from the bats that sometimes invade the general area – it’s in a National Park so they probably don’t want to inconvenience the poor bats too much!!!

The hot springs drain into the Waterhous (correct spelling according to my atlas) River, home of quite a lot of freshwater crocodiles as you will see from the photograph. There is a set of steps down into the river adjacent where I photographed the crocs and it is evidently OK to swim there provided you don’t interfere with them – I don’t think so, not for me anyway.

Warloch Ponds is an area about 20 Km south of Mataranka. It was once part of Elsey Station. This year the area has retained a lot of water and it has become home to a huge number of water birds. In the time we were there we saw jabiru, brolga, white necked heron, hundreds of egrets and many, many others. Taking the photo on the Warloch Ponds road bridge was a bit of a challenge, it’s not designed for pedestrians. Each time a road train came (generally with cattle) I had to move to the other side of the bridge – just as well two didn’t cross, there was really nowhere for me to have gone and I would have to do the bolt quickly and get off the bridge. The kite in the other photograph was an interested spectator and was happy to sit on the road bridge quite close to me.

Next stop Katherine, another short hop.