Day 45 07/05/2011 Banka Banka Station – Elsey National Park (Mataranka)

We were up early with the sparrows, although in truth it was the galahs who work us up with their raucous laughter from the tree above our van, try as we might to be the first to leave many of the grey nomads and other families left before us, we did though get on the road by 8am and we were happy with that as we had a long days drive ahead of us.

We pulled into Elliot to get fuel and were very pleased that we hadn’t pushed on last night to Elliot as the caravan park did not look inviting!! We did though learn that we were leaving the wide open spaces of Central Australia and heading to the tropics, the information booth stated that we would notice a change on the scenery and the wide open spaces as far as the eye could see would end and we were entering into woodland country!! This became apparent as the morning progressed.

Close to lunch so we headed into Daly Waters to check out the pub, apparently they do a mean barra burger but unfortunately today was not eat out day so we were content with a walk through the pub and a look at the memorabilia that is strung around the pub, the memorabilia includes bra’s underpants, money from around the world and people’s identification / business cards.  I can assure you we did not leave anything behind, Zac refused to give up his knickers!!

We then hit the road again and headed to Mataranka, we were looking forwarded to a swim in the thermal pools. Once we set up the site we headed to the pool for a well-earned swim. What surprised us though was that the vegetation around the pools and was so tropical, giant palms everywhere, there was clear evidence of where the recent wet season had flowed through and there was plenty of water over the road flowing energetically to the Roper River. We also learnt that you can go Barramundi fishing here and Zac well to say he is excited is an understatement!! He has his rods rigged and we will head out early tomorrow for a spot of barra fishing!! Who knows we might just catch one or two. Although we did see some locals walking down he road with two fish, Zac commented on their lack of rods and stated that maybe they had speared the fish?? I hope he doesn’t harbour some inner expectations that I can spear a barramundi for him in the morning !!

We did check out the local swimming hole in the national park but the sign clearly stated that the swimming season had not commenced!!  There are still some concerns about salt water croc’s being this far south due to the big wet season!!  I was happy to give swimming in the Roper Rover a miss!!

What we also experienced was humidity for the first time on the trip, we were on the edge of the tropics and it was hot, about 34 degrees and very humid!!  Oh well top end here we come!!

Dinner was had inside the van because Elsey NP had the biggest mosquitos that I have experienced so far on the trip….eating outside was just encouraging them to eat us!!