15 March 2013 - Big4 Katherine Holiday Park, Katherine, Northern Territory

All our fellow campers were gone before we packed up to leave. The sun was well up and the 28 degree heat had me melting before breakfast. I have a long way to go before I am properly acclimatised to the heat and humidity of this Territory.

The helicopter tour office at Daly Waters

It is only 44 kilometres up the highway to Daly Waters, one of the many telegraph stations on the Overland Telegraph Line, gained greater notoriety for its role in World War II. The airfield here was a centre for the London to Sydney air race of 1926 that kicked off the Qantas story already referred to in my posting about Longreach and then an Airforce Base and even more recently an operational base for joint military manoevres. Today there is little here but the Pub, now a legendary tourist destination and the twenty three folk who live here. The pseudo helicopter tour’s office caught my fancy however little else and we returned to the main highway after this six kilometre detour. It was early but even if we had been somewhat later, the thought of a beer and a yarn, the ideal experience at Daly Waters, is hardly the stuff to precede further travel on the Stuart Highway where most are travelling along at 130 kph or even 160 kph, if one can believe all one hears.

The road north, on through Larrimah and on to Mataranka, all one hundred and sixty odd kilometres, continues through beautiful lush growth. Abundant green grass for the few cattle we saw but little else seems to be done with this verdant land. Perhaps it is not as fertile and abundant as it appears from the road, although I personally suspect the main problem is that much of this road passes through Aboriginal Trust Land. Need I say more?

Just sitting about in the shade

Mataranka,  a township of about 250, sits on the upper Roper River which eventually finds its way to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Pre-war, the town was a rail and pastoral centre, but became so much more when World War II broke out in this part of the globe. I do not cease to be impressed by the role that Australia took in the Second World War and here as we have proceeded up the Highway, we have passed one historical spot after another; Banka Banka, a staging camp, Elliot, a staging camp, Daly Waters, an aerodrome, Larrinah, a bulk issue petrol and oil depot and No 45 Hospital,  the Gorrie Airstrip, a stores depot and so on and on. Mataranka hosted over one hundred military units during the war years. Aborigines from the nearby Aboriginal Army Camp provided valuable service over a range activities.

Today the aborigines of Mataranka seemed all out about the town, aimlessly ambling. They do like to be outdoors. We struck up conversation with a chap who works for the government and oversees training and work projects, one of these being basically a “work for the dole” where about thirteen locals from this town “work” on community projects about the town, keeping it tidy and the like, for three and a half hours a couple of times a week. This government official lamented the fact he could not source computers with the appropriate software to start a new training programme, however we wondered why they even bothered. Basic reading and writing skills in English would be so much more worth while. Chris reckons the locals here seem little more advanced than they were when he worked in the Aboriginal Settlement camps forty years ago.

I had suggested we might stay here since there seemed a few attractions worth seeking out, however I did find the listless inhabitants rather depressing and was pleased in the end for us to buy “fresh” bread at the one supermarket and head to one of the famous springs for lunch.

We paid $4.99 for a loaf of bread that had been delivered to Mataranka yesterday and how old had it been then? I considered the fact that these people living on welfare have to shop thus and to spend twice the amount I would normally spend on a loaf of bread. It made me think that it must be hard to make ends meet here in Mataranka if you were a welfare recipient. Perhaps they pay a special subsidised price?

We headed out to Bitter Springs, a tropical spring-fed thermal pool located just two kilometres from Mataranka. These pools flow at a constant 32 degrees and are still very much in their natural state. Swimmers can glide with a current downstream or simply swim the short distance between the two entry points, as we did. I was delighted to find that we still fitted into our swim suits and even more delighted with the swim. We were completely alone for about half an hour and then were joined by three locals, one an Austrian girl working in one of the tourist accommodation facilities and the others, an Australian and his Thai wife, taking a break from their work up at the uranium mine at Jabiru. We engaged in lengthy conversation with them all; always an informative exercise.

Enjoying lovely Bitter Springs

Despite the urgings by our fellow waterbabies, we decided not to stay in Mataranka, but to push on to Katherine, a further 106 kilometres. Our first point of call was the Information Centre where we picked up an armful of pamphlets covering Darwin, the Kakadu National Park, much else and of course Katherine. Here we learned that the saltwater crocodiles are rampant in the area and swimming is forbidden in the Katherine River and the Katherine Hot Springs and several other places we had hoped to swim, in line with the lovely pictures in the tourist brochures.

These warnings should be taken seriously because we learned on the news tonight that a five and a half metre crocodile who reputedly took a horse last week, was shot over at Borroloola, out to the east of here. Experts reckon the croc was probably eighty years old.

We were directed to the Northern Land Council where we might learn about access to the Bamylli Aboriginal Settlement, now called Barunga. Here Linda explained that we did not need a permit to call here and so this may well be one of the trips we make over the next few days. Chris is keen to wander down this nostalgic route.

Our walk up and down the main street revealed that the aborigines of Katherine and surrounds were all out here for the day as well; vocal, visible and melodious. While Chris acknowledged that there was much modernisation of the buildings in Katherine which had been "town” to him for a special time in his life, he was disappointed to see that the locals seemed to have gone backwards rather than forward.

We came on to this camp, set in forty four acres of parkland the other side of the river. We crossed on the one lane bridge below the camp, the river looking quite ravaged from floods over the past few months. Apparently the bridge has been closed only briefly about three or four times through this Wet Season; normally it is closed for months at a time through the summer season. The Wet in this part of the world has indeed been drier than normal. Must be Global Warning?

The camp has a lovely pool and we indulged yet again, twice in one day after months or even a year of abstinence. As a storm passed over, we lounged on the edge of the pool chatting with a couple who have been here working in Katherine for months. How lovely it is to be semi-submerged as the tropical rain comes down.

We have booked and paid for three days. Who knows how long we will actually stay?