Katherine to Mataranka

12th June 2013

Well this morning we all got up before sunrise, had breakfast and packed down the van. We decided to leave the van at the caravan park on power while we headed off to Katherine Gorge for the morning, which was only 29kms out of town.

When we arrived at the gorge, we went to visitors centre to check out the walks and while it was pretty impressive, it was mainly geared up to booking people on the boat cruise up the Katherine River. Having said that, the interpretive centre was very good and after having a bit of a look around we set off on our walk for the morning.

To get to the lookout we had to climb up about 80 steps to reach the top of the gorge wall and true to form Chloe, Maggie & I ran up them, while Rach was content to carry the gear and walk up to the top. The view of the river and first gorge was beautiful and after some time checking out the view we decided it was time to head off.

          

                          The steps from hell                                        Katherine Gorge

For the return trip Rach & Mags walked back the way we came and Chloe & I decided to run back to the visitors centre via a 2.8km gorge rim track, which was tiring but a lot of fun & across some beautiful countryside.

After a well earned drink, we headed back to the caravan park, hooked up the van and made our way out of town. On the way out we stopped for a photo the statue of "Sabu", who is a famous stockman of Katherine.

Statue of "Sabu"

We continued south stopping at Cutta Cutta caves, which was great. The cave is a 250m long limestone cave about 100kms south of Katherine and was very picturesque cave. When we came out of the cave, we had lunch and then continued on the road to the town of Mataranka.

 

        Maggie at the entrance to Cutta Cutta Caves                        Inside Cutta Cutta Cave

We arrived at Mataranka around 3pm and the area is best known for its thermal hot springs, which run all year round at 34 degrees. We went to the Mataranka Homestead & caravan park, where they have a replica of Elsey Homestead (from "We of the Never Never" fame) as well as being only 50m from the entry of the hot springs.

Chloe outside the replica of Elsey Homestead

So after setting up the van and checking out the Elsey Homestead, the girls were very keen to get to the hot springs. We spent about an hour & a half in the springs before heading back to the van. Unfortunately as we got out of the springs, Maggie missed a step while drying off, fell over and landed face first on the paving giving herself a bad blood nose ( she really is in the wars in he Territory - poor thing).

The Family at Mataranka Hot Springs

Eventually we headed back to the van, had a shower & dinner before heading down to the homestead bar where they had some live country music playing, which was a good to see before turning in for the night.