Mataranka to Alice Springs

Warm springs, rocks and quirky pubs

Now in our fifth month of touring, we once again joined the Stuart Highway, this time going South.

We stopped at Bitter Springs and loved drifting down the thermal springs. The water was crystal clear and the boys enjoyed using their goggles to try and spot fish and turtles (hopefully not salt water crocodiles or snakes).

We spent a couple of nights in Elsey National Park. The campsite itself was huge with great facilities, but it was run-down and there were only a handful of people camping on both nights. We don’t like crowds so it suited us perfectly and it was also super cheap.

We swam in Mataranka thermal pool which wasn’t as natural as Bitter Springs but was totally lovely anyway. The only downside was the huge colony of bats which had returned for the breeding season. We loved watching the bats but they gave the place a bit of an odour and must have affected the water quality to some degree.

We had a quick look at the replica homestead used for the film “We of the Never Never”. It’s a real shame that it had been let go. The roof was buckling and some of the costumes had fallen off their hangers and were covered in dust on the ground.

We dropped in to Daly Waters for fuel. What a hoot that place was. The Outback Servo was tiny and to get to the bowser we had to park part way across a road, but no one seemed to mind. The town was full of character buildings and it would be great to spend a day exploring there. The pub was quirky; just hilarious really.

We visited the Stuart Tree, where the explorer John McDouall Stuart carved his initials on a tree in 1862 and also the Daly Waters historical aerodrome.

At Three Ways we drove past a memorial for the Very Reverend John Flynn, founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

We had a look around The Pebbles and wandered around Devil’s Marbles. We dropped in to Barrow Creek Pub for a drink. This was another crazy little pub and the kids loved the real and pretend money pinned up on the walls, not to mention the very friendly bartender.

Alice Springs

Alice Springs probably deserves a post all of its own, but despite spending three nights there we hardly left the caravan park.

By the time we arrived we had been on the go non-stop for well over two months and we were completely travel-fatigued. We had no appetite for anything touristy. If we were having a longer trip now would have been the time to stay along the coast somewhere for about a month and just rest.

We planned to go mountain biking in an area which is supposedly fabulous but two mechanicals and flats on both the boys bikes meant that we’d covered less than 1.5km before we had to pull the pin. Three corner jacks were everywhere and the boys tubes were no match for them! We were really disappointed as the trails looked excellent and would have given us a wonderful experience of outback Alice.

The only other place we spent any real time in was the Alice Springs Hospital for yet another unscheduled visit to the emergency department! Oliver drove his toe into the ground after trying to leap from the ladder to the fifth rung on the monkey bars and managed to fracture it. Unfortunately he damaged it along the growth plates and so we need to return in a week’s time for another x-ray. What can I say!