Thermal Pools, Waterfalls and National Parks

Elsey Homestead of We of the Never, Never fame

We continued onto Mataranka Resort which is truly beautiful. There is a 32 degree thermal pool in which we hopped to cool down – that’s how hot it was out of the pool. Mataranka is also the place where “We of the never never”, was written and recorded on film which is shown daily here. We enjoyed a few quiet relaxing days here.

Next stop is at Katherine. We were hoping to visit Allan however the road to Nhulunbuy will remain closed until at least the end of June due to a very late wet season and some of the rivers are flooded in the area. So we will visit & work in Darwin and see how the river fares in the meantime. Whilst in Katherine, we went for some short drives around and found the thermal pools here where we went in clothes and all since we hadn’t planned on swimming and it was just too tempting. We loved it. It is narrower and closer to the spring source.

We spoilt ourselves and took a helicopter ride & cruise up the Katherine Gorge. After a night of rain, the sun came through in perfectly lovely patches which lit up the rocks and gorges but not too much that was stinking hot. We saw 3 long waterfalls and 13 gorges. A 30 minute flight really disappears quickly and it seemed like no time at all and we were back on the ground and rushing off to the cruise wharf. We thoroughly enjoyed the laid back cruise and the breeze created by the movement of the boat whilst viewing everything the gorges had to offer. It was hard to limit our photos to show you of our flight & cruise, it was all so beautiful. More photos are at the end of this entry.

Leaving Katherine we went onto Edith Falls which is an absolutely terrific place and cheap too! It is certainly not overcrowded even though there are no powered sites. Each site has it’s ‘own’ private grassed backyard. I played a joke on Bob. I went back to our van and told him that people we had met previously were there too and that we were invited to go around later to chat and such. Bob didn’t ask any questions about them. I think he assumed that I couldn’t remember their name, I did deliberately put him off by saying that these people were on their way back to Katherine. It was our fellow BCA Nomads. Richard’s car had broken down and had to be towed back, so I was telling Bob the truth... I just didn’t tell him the whole story. It was worth the fun and games. No swimming at the fall’s pool due to crocs, so we went for a 2.5km walk to the top pool.