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Anouk does like drawing but perhaps
The Pebbles (near Tennant Creek ) was
not the appropriate place .... |
Well, get a long way from Tennant Creek we did - 560 kms in one day in fact - a record I hope that we will not see broken but Mum REALLY did not like Tennant Creek. Anyway, we got to Mataranka which is home to some Thermal Pools and a bunch of wildlife. The caravan park was located right next to the thermal pools and they were very nice - about 34 degrees. If anything, a touch warm. If fact, it was decidely hot in Mataranka in the middle of the day - mid 30's. Also, there were heaps of wallabies and lyrebirds that came into the caravan park. Also bloody noisy cockatoos that dropped these massive and heavy things out of the trees on to the van.
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A wallaby near Steve and Nana's caravan.
This one was looking decidedly nervous... |
And it was in relation to the wallabies that Pa - now known as Steve (as in Irwin not as in Nelson) - really showed his bush prowess. Apparently some wallaby was causing problems with noise in the middle of the night so he went out to inspect and saw a wallaby in the rubbish bin. Now, here the story gets a little scratchy. Mum's version of events is that she heard the noise and looked out and saw some local vagabond with skinny white legs going through the rubbish. Pa's view was that he had to grab the wallaby by the tail and swing it around his head three times in order to rescue it. Whatever the truth he made so much noise that most people in the caravan park heard about it and wanted to know what happened and he became somewhat notorious in the caravan park for throwing the wallaby in the rubbish bin in the first place (that may have been me spreading that story).
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Thermal pools at Mataranka. Isaac happy, Anouk
happy, random tourist taking photo of wallaby in
background happy. Yvette screaming - but you
cannot see her on the basis of my concerns
about DHS looking at this site. |
Taking about noise, Yvette managed to scream every time we took her near the pools. A water baby she is not. Isaac, who along wtih the other two, was fantastic on the trip to Mataranka (apparently, he did not like Tennant Creek either) was then hopeless the following day when he refused to go do bed. Finally resulted in Dad getting him in the car and taking him out to the loneliest patch of some godforsaken road in the middle of nowhere and threatening to leave him there. Not in the parenting books, I know, but it worked. (PS please do not show this website to DHS and if they are reading this - please be aware that we did things differently up here).
The trip into Kakadu was another interesting experience - 400 k's and the kids were still very good. 38 degrees. Had to hand it to the windscreen bloke in Katherine. A got a chip in windscreen a few days ago and I dropped into to ask him what he could do about it. His impressive customer service was, "well, when I finish what I am doing I will come and have a look". Apparently not much competition around these parts. The second impressive thing was the bush fire we had to drive through in Kakadu. Well, it was either a bushfire or the Northern Territory method of burning off - light a match and wonder off and let it burn.
Tomorrow, we are going crocodile spotting. Hopefully, Pa will leave them alone.
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There are two sets of thermal pools. One near where we stayed
and another set north of the town which are more "natural" -
that is, they have not removed the swamp, the water snakes or the
spiders, |
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