Tennant Creek to Matarnaka / Bitter Springs
Monday morning saw Helen up and off to the Library in Tennant Creek, she needed to print off some emails and then post on to the UK! This done she drove back to campground where Richard hitched up. We towed again north on the Stuart Highway to a recommended camping ground called Banka Banka Station where we could connect to water but not to electricity. We arrived early and Bob the manager put us on site and within the hour there were another 25 or so caravans rolled in. This station is a very convenient stop off on the Stuart Highway as distances are so huge between places. We booked in for 2 nights but stayed for three. There was free entertainment every night by a country and western singer. By the time we got to our third night we were a little tired of hearing the same old, same old renditions of Jonny Cash, Willie Nelson etc, etc.......
Photographs below:
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| THE BAR |
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| View from the hill behind the Station |
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| Toby, the Station/campground worker's dog a red Kelpie had given birth 4/5 weeks ago to 8 puppies here are just a few! |
We had a really good time here and again met some lovely people, a couple in particular we now keep in touch with. Pete and Caron!
Leaving Banka Banka our planned route to Daly Waters was interrupted by our reversing camera connection failing. We pulled into what we knew was a free camp and Richard decided to try and fix our camera problem. We had lunch and Richard pondered for a few hours over the situation...he decided it was knackered and we needed a new cable!! We stayed here overnight by ourselves, we thought, until approximately 8:30 p.m. a car came towards us with a young couple who wanted to camp for the night. It was good to have company and we all sat around the fire. The couple Kane and Margot (she was Canadian) had travelled from Mount Isa today and we decided it must have been 800 + kilometres they were really trying to get to Darwin to find work!!
Sun up very early and we all had coffee and chat before we said farewell.
Daly Waters pub is famous on the Stuart Highway as a watering hole and entertainment place with a large campground. It is particularly famous for its "Beef and Barra" menu, the Barra being Barramundie fish...Helen sampled the Barra twice as we decided to stay for three nights. Entertainment here was a different type of music to the last place. Steve was more of a rock and roll artist he seemed to specialise in one hit wonders!! which was very good. Daly Waters has a really great system of feeding lots of people, they give you a time between 6:30 - 7:30 with three cookings. The chef was amazing at preparing and cooking the fish and beef! Sorry, I didn't get any photographs of him cooking!
Daly Waters Photographs below:
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| Sorry the large piece of Barra is under all the salad Yummy food |
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| Had to show this van with wind generator, talked to the owner and it works really well! |
We had some very nice neighbours for two days but, here again we came across a strange man who told us he was a Commercial Pilot!! he had a Jayco silverline similar to ours... Well I could go on to tell you a few stories about this person but I had better not....So if anyone does want to know I will tell privately, yes got you all intrigued now!! one snippet to tell you is Richard gave him a nickname of "Flying Officer Kite" and also "Biggles" he was a very strange character!!
We left Daly Waters needing supplies and headed toward Mataranka which was 160kms away. After a very quick journey we located our chosen campground and booked in for two nights. Here in the small town there was a small supermarket which was very very expensive!! a few basics bought and then off to the nearest Thermal pool we went. Bitter Springs was an easy walk from the campground and here we used noodles enabling us to float with the flow of the water. Everyone attached their thongs/jandals to either end of the noodle and once at the end we were able to walk back with said jandals and do it all again. Very pleasant to say the least.
It was a very hot evening and it was pleasant to sit outside for a few hours. We had a small frog or toad come to visit us too!
Our next day, we decided to visit the Mataranka Homestead where the novel "We of the Never Never" was based the author Jeannie Gunn lived here in the area and wrote of her time living in the outback in 1902/03. The film was shot here and they built a replica of the Homestead using information from her book. There is a large campground here too we had a look around the old replica then into the bar where the film "We of the Never Never" is shown everyday at Noon!
The thermal springs here were just lovely and we stayed floating around for well over an hour.
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| Watching the film |
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| Helen in the thermal pool a beautiful 34C |
We moved on after a long talk with our neighbours and headed to Katherine only 114km where Helen was in awe of seeing some famous sights e.g. McDonalds!!!
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