2006/06 Australia trip - Mataranka |
|||
Our first stop was just 50 miles up the road at Fran’s Tea House in Larrimah, a tiny community. The tea house is in the old police station. Since our last visit Fran has had the big trees removed and now has a nice shaded verandah along the building. She’s also expanded her menu, but to Sandie’s relief, the Devonshire Tea with scones, cream, and jam is still on it. She’s had new rain barrels installed so that she can make it 
through the dry winter season with the previous summer’s rainwater. The rainwater comes straight off the roof, so it has sand in it for extra body. The only other option for people in the desert is to use bore water,pumped up from the aquifer, but that’s salty and people only use it for washing and for their animals.
From there it was another short drive to Elsey national park just before Mataranka. We’d heard that many of the caravanners were headed for Mataranka, but luckily they didn’t choose the park’s campground and we found a nice quiet spot. By this time it was definitely ‘ot, but not as ‘ot as our last visit in November 2002, when it was around 100.
We took a walk along the Roper River to Mataranka Falls, a walk we hadn’t had time for on our last visit. This was radically different scenery, with the wide and deep river, little streams cascading down the banks, palm trees, lizards, and butterflies. Most of the hike was on soft sand, which did nasty things to my heel, but it was a beautiful day for some pain. With such a wide river we expected the falls to be spectacular, and we were a little disappointed to view the mighty Roper River plummetingover a knee-high ridge of limestone.
 |
Elsey (0.54) |  |
|---|
It was a slow limp back to the campground as the sun was setting. I saw a wallaby flash by. He made no sound on 
the soft sand so it looked like he was flying. It was a great evening for sitting outside under the stars eating bacon butties and drinking good Tasmanian beer. Sandie got a couple of insect bites but there didn’t seem to be much in the way of flying bugs.
Tuesday June 20th
We had another slow start, enjoying the beautiful morning. We filled up with water. It tasted OK, but always seemed to have a thin film of sludge on top. It was the best we could get on the day.
We drove a little way to the Mataranka Resort. This was built on the edge of the warm springs that the area is famous for. The army dug out a small swimming pool amongst the palms back in WW2, and one of the officers came back after the war and opened the resort. Today the springs are part of Elsey national park, 
but the resort and the extensive bar are still privately owned.
The springs are warm, not hot, and no trace of sulphur, so the water smells and tastes good. The water comes from an aquifer that starts in New Guinea and the springs have a prodigious flow, difficult to swim against. The pool is in a mainly natural setting under the palms, with a sand and rock bottom and just enough stonework to protect the banks. The pool has the occasional water monitor and fresh water crocodile, but there were none there when we went swimming.
This area was made famous by Jeannie Gunn’s book, “We of the Never Never”, her name for the strange and beautiful country around Mataranka. Her book tells the story of her trip from Darwin a hundred years ago to join her husband, the Maluka, who was managing a cattle station. It’s a diary of her year on the station, telling about all the strange characters, white, Chinese, and aborigines that worked and lived at the station. The book ends abruptly when her husband dies from malarial dysentery, and she has to leave so that a new manager can come in. The book was made into an Australian film, and the title is now a catch phrase for the NT tourism industry, “If you never never go you’ll never never know”.
We drove to the site of the original homestead, long gone now, obliterated by an army road in WW2. Many of the characters from the book are buried at the nearby Elsey cemetery: the Maluka (her husband), the Fizzer, and the Dandy. It’s an odd spot, a well kept cemetery, miles from anywhere.