Mataranka
We slide easily into the water at Bitter Springs. A strange name for this place of turquoise blue shimmer and palms. Its water is warmed from deep beneath the earth and flows gently as we float downstream. Jade iridescent dragonflies flicker over its surface and lillypads line its banks. This is what we have been waiting for! We don't find the turtles we hoped to see but nor do we see the freshwater crocodiles we'd hoped not to.
We camp close by at a stock camp where kids can feed sugar gliders and handle snakes and reptiles. We eat Johnny cakes and Billy tea for breakfast and they play endlessly with new friends on climbing frames made from cattle gates and hay bales. The sound of kids cracking whips, parrots dropping seed pods on tin and a gentle breeze feels like holiday. We could stay here a while.
Mataranka is the setting for the autobiography "We of the Never Never" written by the first white woman settler to this area who moved here with her husband in the early 1900's to manage Elsey Station. Her life story, far from 'holiday' is next on my reading list.
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