18 February 2000

Made an early start out of Tennant Creek this morning - around 7:30 a.m. - in mist and drizzle, but fairly soon drove out of it into general broken cloud and sunshine. Had expected to arrive Katherine around 2:30 p.m. but instead got here around 5:00 p.m. after stopping or detouring to see a number of interesting places on the way.

First stop was at Renner Springs for fuel and some brekky. We tend to top up our tank at every opportunity up here because we never know when we may want to detour to look at something. The spring was named after its discoverer who was doctor to the men of the overland telegraph party. Breakfast was a cup of coffee and a couple of slices of toasted home-made bread and jam/marmalade - yum.

Next stop Elliott - petrol again.

Then a detour to have a look at the old town of Newcastle Waters. Quiet little town (almost comatose, in fact) which contains nothing more than a few scattered houses and a pretty little park with a larger than life-size statue of a drover.

Then on to Dunmarra - petrol again. And a little bit down the track a detour to see the town of Daly Waters. Again, not much there except for a pub dating from 1930 which the locals consider, for some reason I couldn't fathom, to have some historical significance. Of more interest was the old airstrip just out of town. It was the first international refuelling stop for Qantas in 1935 and was also used by the RAAF as an airbase during WW2. We drove drown the strip, which appears still to be in good condition (it is 2.2 kilometres long - about 2,400 yards or 1-1/3 miles) and was in use up to 1971. The hangar and apron areas are also intact, and the barracks are to be restored. Also at Daly Waters is the Stuart tree supposed to be marked with the letter "S" by the explorer John McDouall Stewart. Although we were able to drive into the area where the tree is located, it was surrounded by water and so we could not approach it. In fact speaking of water, it is amazing how much water is lying about up here at the moment. All the creeks we crossed between Tennant Creek and Katherine were running well, and there were large areas of water by the side of the road (some extending into the adjacent scrub) in many places. There were also a couple of places where water covered the road, but it was not very deep. About 4:00 p.m. this afternoon we came through torrential rain between Mataranka and Katherine.

Anyhow, from Daly Waters we moved on to Larrimah, another fuel stop. We were going to have some lunch there but for some reason we didn't like the roadhouse. Larrimah served as a staging camp for over 3,000 servicemen during WW2.

As an aside, it was interesting to note the number of historic WW2 sites between Tennant Creek and Katherine (and maybe south of Tennant Creek too, but we didn't notice any when we were down that way yesterday). These included another airport at Gorrie, a couple of hospitals, stores dumps and staging/grouping facilities.

After leaving Larrimah we were heading for Mataranka when we saw a turn off to the site of the original Elsey Station homestead (made famous by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn in her book "We of the Never Never") and also the Elsey cemetery (which contains the graves of some of the people in the book). How could we resist? And very interesting it was, too. The original homestead is no longer there, but the site is marked by a cairn and plaque placed there by the sisters if the Australian Inland Mission "in appreciation" in 1958. The cemetery is spread over a reasonably large area for the few graves it contains but is very well maintained. We were fortunate to be able to compliment a couple of the local council workers on it as they happened along while we were there.

Heading once more for Mataranka we were again waylaid, this time by a sign directing us to the Mataranka Hot Springs. These are reached by a road through the Mataranka Resort and are natural hot (warm) springs where the water bubbles up from the ground continuously at a temperature of around 34 degrees C (i.e., almost body temperature). This has created an exotic rain forest vegetation with palm trees inhabited by hundreds (thousands?) of flying foxes. We were reassured by the signs informing us that although we may see freshwater crocodiles, they hardly ever bite!

And so (at last) to Katherine. We will probably be here for a couple of days as there is lots to see around here, and we have yet still to see a few things at Mataranka.