Tennant Creek to Mataranka

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Monday 11 June 2007

Culture shock culture shock culture shock - we’ve arrived at Tennant Creek to be greeted by ‘Neville’ a local Aboriginal guy who took a liking to Matt and Lily straight away. We headed into the grocery store (which had huge iron bars protecting it), bought our food and came out to see our car and van still there and no-one sitting on either of them asking us to buy them beers (apparently this can be a common occurrence).

We stayed the night at the Outback Caravan Park and decided to treat ourselves to a $3 show. Jimmy (the bush tucker man) Hooker was a bush poet who was going to recite a few poems for us and show us some bush tucker that we could taste………..that is until we were 10 minutes into it and Lily fell asleep closely followed by her brother Ethan!!! Must have been the lovely camp fire we’d sat around prior to the poems.

Anywho we left Tennant Creek behind and caught up with Nev and Bron again much to the kids delight. Saturday night we spent at Daly Waters Pub - it’s a great little pub in the middle of absolutely no where!!!! Matt and Nev managed to watch the rugby Australia V Fiji. It cost a measly $5/pp/night what a steal. It is full of old people though and the odd backpacker - there are two German girls working behind the bar they had been in Australia for 5 months and at Daly Waters for 1 week. Basically the caravan park is a paddock full of dust which fills up with caravaners, motor homes, campervans, tents, people staying in station wagons - you name it they stay there. The pub itself is full of paraphernalia all over the walls and roof - people have visited from all over the world and they leave student cards, business cards, bra’s, undies, flags etc. The kids even had their first sleep over at Nanny and Poppy’s yay!!!! So Matt and I stayed up for a little bit and played some pool, had a chat to an English couple from Brighton and generally relaxed (thanks guys) - best bit was we slept all through the night and woke at 7 (that’s a sleep in for us). Nearly forgot to mention the delicious Barramundi and beef that we had cooked for us for $19.50 mm mmm.

Note to Chris - the menu at the Daly Waters Pub had samiges (see I’m not the only one that calls them that).

So after a delightful evening and leisurely morning, we headed to Elsey National Park where we are staying for a few nights.

Gotta say today has been one of the highlights so far. Apart from staying put for a day already where we could do some washing and I finally got to cook my beef stroganoff (that’s a story for later), Matt and I got off our fat butts and went for a 8km walk to Mataranka Falls, it was absolutely beautiful (the walk and being away from the kids for 3 hours he he he). When we got to the pontoon we had a swim (or a quick dip for Bron the wuss) in Roper River with the Crocs. Got to say my legs are going to hurt tomorrow…..however we toughed it out and took the kids to the Mataranka Thermal Pool where it was a balmy 34 degrees - I must say it’s a tough life sometimes. Matt also managed to catch a snake, see photo attached.

Now to top off the night, we have a roast pork and veggies for dinner with chocolate pudding for dessert…………..that’s going to be hard to beat. I think we are here for another night and then heading to Katherine for a night to watch the state of origin.

We are getting some beautiful photos of the kids, they seem to be growing up so much. Ethan is walking more and we are trying to get him to talk more (fat chance with Lily around he doesn’t get a word in even if he could!!) He is definitely becoming a little traveler.

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Comments

[Carolyn]

Jealous
Reading your blog is enough to make anybody want to just pack up and go. Looks like so much fun. Good on ya guys.

[Robyn Small]

Now your travelling!!!
Hi guys - great to see you having such a good time - brought back memories of when we went to Mataranka with the 2 dutch girls. Can't wait to see you cheers Robyn Kev Louie and Gypsy