Friday 11/5/2012

Morning at Mataranka. The locals have been yelling, screaming, fighting  at each other all night, fuelled no doubt by the many ‘slabs’ we saw walking out of the pub as we drove in. When I say all night I mean at 7am when I went for a walk I got as far as the bend in the road where the shanty town is and they were still going hammer and tongs and I felt positively threatened and so came back to camp. Judy was watching TV and the alternative of going to the Mataranka Thermal pool for a dip was much more appealing. That's ticked one of the 'must dos' of Judy's list at least! We had been to Bitter Springs the night before and it was a bit creepy to say the least. Mataranka Springs is in behind the Mataranka Homestead Hotel and caravan park and is set up a bit like a pool with steps and things. We spent a pleasant ½ hour there before hitting the road to Katherine, only 104 k up the road.

We are both feeling much better right now, i was just about finished by yesterday arvo after being up most of the night, losing the entire contents of my stomach (i was waiting for intestines to come out!) and then spending 7 1/2 hours on the road, worried sick then entire time that the car was going to blow up in the dessert and leave us stranded  and it being 30+... could be forgiven for being a bit flat I reckon.
We've had to rethink our priorities and our plans. I can't in all sincerity say that it would be anything but foolhardy to continue to Broome under the present circumstances, it’s too far and too isolated and frankly, the driving is too boring for words. we might and would still like to get to Kununurra (500k west of Katherine) but that, as they say, 'all depends' on resolving the car issue, in Darwin on Friday.
Katherine is where we are now at, and this is a really nice park, like a very large oasis is a very large desert wilderness. We'll head up to Darwin on Wednesday and see how things turn out.
Right now we've had a lovely swim, we're sipping champagne and listening to the myriads of birds chattering away as the sun sets pretty damn quick in the west.

Snaps? I have none, it's a snap free day!
Oh and i fixed the Alice photos so give them a squiz