Day 50- Mataranka

yay! a lazy day with no travel. :) The kids were up early floating leaf-boats in the big plastic bath container.

Got the inevitable washing out of the road early and then went for a drive to have a look at the area. Went to the Elsey Station homestead replica that was made for when they filmed the movie, We of the Never Never. I assumed that the original Elsey Station was actually in Mataranka but it was over 20km away. Was good to walk through but nothing that i have not seen before.

Then walked along the trail through the odd mix of dry tropical forest to the Thermal Pool. It looked quite nice and less boring-concrete than i imagined. If we get a chance we might bring the kids back tomorrow for a swim while the men are fishing.

Not far from the thermal pool the two smaller rivers join up and there is a road with several day picnic areas and swimming spots and fishing areas so we went to see what the main river was like. And we wanted to try out Stevie's Hole which is a swimming spot in the river that is NOT warmed by mineral springs so we were hoping for a more refreshing swim (never happy!). But while we knew there was a 1.5km return botanic walk from the road i think the walk sounded more appealing when we were sitting inside the air conditioned caravan than it did once we were out in the heat. So we got to the entrance of the walk and read the tourist info sign and nodded and got back in the truck. :) Drove through some of the other day areas which were all quite nice and then had our picnic lunch down at 12Mile Yards. 12Mile Yards is an overnight camp area as well and is the other spot we had considered staying at while we were here. It would have been quite a nice cheap camp but the sandy soil is hot and it's all quite dry (no idea why cos there have sprinkers set up everywhere and with the bore mineral water they could run all day but...??) so i am glad we stayed at the park. After lunch we went for a walk down to the river. There are some swimming pontoons in the river and we found a little hot spring stream that run into it. You can really see how the calcium builds up on things and it has made a series of little waterfalls along the stream. We splashed between the cooler river, the warmer stream, and the in-between delta for an hour or more while Tim sat on the pontoons and had a fish (caught nothing).
Jordy and i collected a heap of shells in the stream and that kept him amused for ages! He'd find more and more and get excited and almost shout "Look! Look at this one!" As if the new one he had found was any different to the dozen identical ones we had already collected. hehehe.

Back to the van for the afternoon and i had a change to go online to check out Geocaching which is a sport that Tim and i had known about for a while but never had the time to look into. Not that we have a heck of a lot of free time at the moment! But we are doing things that make finding and placing caches more fun. And would you believe it but there are several caches in the area here!!!

I tried to use our car GPS to locate one and i rode my bike all over the area and looked all in and under things and walked myself stupid until the GPS gave me the shits! It's just not sensitive enough and it seems to think that if if has bought you to the end of the road for the location you entered then that is close enough but that won't work for Geocaching.

So back to the van and Dad dug his old handheld unit out for me. After a few false starts and reading a few more hints online i headed off on my bike again. It finally took me to the right location but it was getting too dark to search so i came back and made dinner instead. LOL! I'll try tomorrow.

Tim had been fishing over sunset and while the arsy kid in the boat was still pulling in barra, Tim caught nothing from the bank.

Pork and potato hotpot thingy in the microwave tonight and then a lazy evening. The town here is quite nice and the people really friendly. The local kids are all out splashing in the streams or fishing or riding their bikes or whatever and they all yell out a hello and wave with a big smile as you go past. It's nice!