Mataranka August 20 Hotsprings again Yeah!!!

Mataranka is a township thats a hours drive from Katherine and has a population of about 250 people. It has a derive station a pub and general store.
It was evidently made famous in an Australian novel by Jeannie Gunn "We of the Never Never" written in 1908 about a Elsey Station. I think its quite an ikon novel in Australian literature.
The main sign into Mataranka says The town of the Never Never and Lloyds and I thought it had a connection to Peter Pan, not so!
Any way we stayed at a lovely campsite at Elsey National Park for 2 nights,it was so green as they watered the grass daily with sprinklers, it seemed a bit strange really to see them going for hours but they had bore water and plenty of it.
The main attraction for many travellers is the 2 natural hot springs. The springs are palm fringed and the Rainbow one has lots of paperbark trees.
We absolutely loved the spring fed thermal pools and river at Bitter Springs which is at about 34deg and is very natural except for some steps going down into them.

Thats me with the green noodle

The best part was that you could float down the river for about 1km just lying back on the noodle and gently moving down among the palms and tropical woodland to the end where you clambered out and walked up a gravel path back to the wider plunge pool to do it all over again.! We saw lots of pretty birds and even a small turtle, some people wear googles and look at the tropical fish which live there too. They say there are some freshies there at night but with so many people you don't even think about them. Its a very magical place.