Australia Flashback: Alice Springs to Mataranka
Tropic of Capricorn, Devil’s Marbles, Tennant Creek, and Mataranka
Sorry for throwing two posts at you in a relatively short time, but I have some free time this morning and I need to finish up this Australia stuff before I completely forget it. At this rate, I will be back to visit Australia before I finish writing about leaving it!
I left off in Alice Springs with Bob feeling cruddy. The next morning, Bob was feeling much better, so we grabbed a quick breakfast and took off.
Just north of town, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. There is a little rest area with a cool monument, so of course we had to document the occasion with a picture.
After that, the next big stop was Karlu Karlu, also known as the Devil’s Marbles. As with so many things in Australia, it is so hard for a person like me with zero photography chops to get a picture worthy of the place. It really is a cool thing to see. The “marbles” are a gigantic field of boulders in the middle of nowhere and they are all stacked up on top of each other and very round and smooth.
The scientific theory is that the boulders were part of a larger rock formation that cracked, and that erosion smoothed the edges and made them spherical. You can see several boulders that have cracked cleanly down the centre due to the extreme heat. It’s pretty wild.
Several guidebooks will tell you that the Aboriginal people believe the boulders are the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent, but apparently this is not true. It is definitely a site of significance and there are certain areas where photographs are forbidden.
We took a quick walk through the conservation area, but once again we had a long drive to our next campsite and we wanted to avoid driving after dark as much as possible.
There’s not a whole lot to see on the road. I like road trips a lot, and I really don’t mind long drives because it is a great chance to let your mind drift and wander. But it’s amazing how far you can drive in Australia without seeing much change in the landscape. I kept looking for changes in vegetation, etc., but I couldn’t detect anything. The only thing I noticed was that the teeny tiny termite mounds were starting to get taller and taller.
We spent the night in Tennant Creek, in a little private campground located on a cattle station. It was quiet and low key and no frills. Running water from a spigot and that’s about it. Really friendly people and we arrived just in time to enjoy the sunset.
The kids had fun playing in the dirt and getting to know the other campers. Someone there had a dog so Fletcher was in heaven. He really isn’t a little boy so much as he is a giant puppy dog. At one point, Margie threw a stick that she had been carrying around and both Fletcher and the dog made a beeline to “fetch” it!
The next morning we had to deal with some motorhome problems. Bob had emptied the grey water several times already, but we were starting to notice that the fresh water tank was not taking quite as much water to fill up. Better yet, there was an icky smell hovering around the motorhome bathroom. We knew it wasn’t sewage, because Bob strictly forbade anyone to use the toilet (or the shower or the sink, so really, what was the purpose of the motorhome as opposed to a van?). And smelly grey water was bouncing up through the shower drain when we hit bumps, which was pretty gross.
Bob starting poking around and found the problem. The lovely humans who rented the motorhome before we did had washed an entire pot of rice down the kitchen sink, making a nice sticky clump in the wastewater drainage hose. Bob commandeered a coat hanger from somewhere and removed the problem, causing a huge gush of disgusting stinky water to come cascading out. Thank goodness the air was so dry and there was a lot of wind that dried it all up and took away the stink.
It’s not a great feeling to realise your motorhome has plumbing issues when the only bathroom is a pit toilet in a tin shack. Although it was remarkably well maintained as far as pit toilets go. Bob gave it two thumbs up on account of the view.
Finally, we were on our way to Mataranka. North of Tennant Creek we could tell that we were approaching the tropics, but only because the temperature was getting slightly warmer and the termite mounds kept getting taller.
There’s no reception on the road unless you are at a road house, so we would only get the chance to check messages once or twice a day. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be such a bad thing, but we were in the midst of an international move and there was a lot of information flying around. I think we were approaching Mataranka when we realised that our flight to Bali was scheduled to leave earlier than we thought, so I spent a lot of time at roadhouses frantically searching for ways to get Margie’s passport to us in Darwin while Bob filled up with petrol.
We almost skipped Mataranka altogether because there weren’t any options for booking ahead with our motorhome. It’s a first in best dressed situation and I was having major anxiety about showing up and finding out that all the caravan parks were full. Finally, we decided that we would just chance it. You can camp for free on the roadside in the NT, and so we figured we would do that as a last resort. Of course, we hadn’t had a chance to charge the batteries and our plumbing situation was precarious, but I’m sure we would have managed.
I’m so glad we didn’t give up on Mataranka. I had seen an article about the hot springs a long time ago and it had a sleepy vibe that appealed to me.
Driving into Mataranka you really have to wonder if you are in the right place, because everything is dry as a bone until you get to the campground. Then suddenly you are in the middle of a bunch of thick palm trees and swamp.
Finding a caravan spot was no problem. The campground is huge! There are no designated spaces so you just have to find a spot and squeeze in. There is a big pub with quite the party going on and we ate dinner there while listening to the band play sing alongs. If you’ve been out on the road for a long time it’s almost overwhelmingly exhilarating to be around such a bunch of lively, happy people in holiday mode.
The campground facilities aren’t great but everyone is so happy that you just don’t care. I get the feeling that people just show up and hang out for a week or even longer. There’s a very minimal dress code to get into the restaurant, which makes me think that people just go a little too wild and free if they’ve been out there for too long.
We saw signs for a “‘whip cracking” show after dinner. I really don’t know what I expected, but I suppose I thought it would be rope tricks and things like that. Which is foolish in retrospect, because whips and lassos don’t really have that much to do with each other.
Anyway, “whip cracking” turned out to be super cool. It’s more like a musical performance, with the whips cracking in time to the music. The whipcracker’s name is Nathan Griggs and he’s quite the showman. I posted a little video of him on instagram while we were still in Mataranka, but here’s a YouTube video (not mine) for my friends who aren’t on social media.
He was selling whips, and several of the kids in attendance bought them and learned how to crack them. It was a very noisy night in the campground as you can imagine. I kept waiting for someone to lose an eye. My kids desperately wanted whips but I didn’t think that would go over well with airport security in Darwin or Denpasar.
We had been advised that a nighttime swim in the hot springs was a must-do, so after the show we changed into our swimmers and set off into the pitch black swamp. It was more than a little creepy, and a nighttime swim must not be on a lot of other people’s bucket lists because we were pretty much the only ones there. We had seen signs for crocodiles earlier in the day and I had both the little kids glued to my sides and whimpering at me the whole way.
Yes, it was pretty, but it wasn’t a great night for stars and I was just too spooked. I much prefer the well lit hot spring in Lightning Ridge back in New South Wales.
The next morning we went back to the hot springs and this time it was much more fun. The water isn’t terribly hot, but it is pleasant. It’s warm enough that you can see the steam floating up from the surface. It’s such a lush little place when you’ve been out in the desert for days and days.
It’s also quite deep. Smart people bring pool noodles so they can float around and relax. We are not smart people, so enjoying the hot springs was a bit more of an athletic pursuit.
Mataranka is also the setting of a famous autobiographical novel by Jeannie Gunn titled, “We of the Never Never.” I picked up a copy from a local bookstore on our way out but haven’t had a chance to read it yet as Anna stole it from me almost immediately. She says it’s great. I’m looking forward to stealing it back when I get a chance. There’s a 1982 movie adaptation of the novel that I have never seen, but some of you may like to check it out.
As usual, I’ve run out of room and will have to go back and do some heavy editing to make this fit in your inboxes. I hope all of you are doing well and enjoying your day or night, wherever you may be!
Best,
Sarah K