Tonight we’ve arrived in Katherine. It seems to be tricky to find absolute clarity on the traditional owners of the lands we’re on tonight – but what seems to be clear is that Katherine has been the place that the Jawoyn, Dagoman, and Wardaman Aboriginal peoples converge, and so it has been an important meeting point for tens of thousands of years.
You’re getting the last two days in one helping, as last night we stayed on a beautifully remote property with absolutely no coverage or internet to speak of. So apologies for the length of this one! Let’s start with how yesterday went…
Day 45 – Alice Springs to Banka Banka
We’re currently sitting on the deck of a handful of shipping container cabins at the Banka Banka West Station as the sun starts to go down. Banka Banka is a cattle station property that has been set up as a beautiful tourist park – primarily a caravan park, but it has a few cabins on site as well. It sits about an hour north of Tennant Creek. Given we’d decided we weren’t going to stop to see anything specific in Tennant Creek (no hugely specific reason – just that we want to see plenty of things and there’s only so much time), I thought this would be a really unique and wonderful spot to stop for the night – and plenty of reviews rave about how wonderful it is here. The property also has a beautiful 3 bedroom cottage, which is what I’d originally booked and planned for us to stay in – but a couple of months back they gave me a call to let me know it needed some maintenance, and so we’re spread across a few of their little cabins! They’re small, but they’re more than fine for us.
It’s been a fairly long day of driving – a bit over 600km to get here. We grabbed a few last minute things for a snacky-type dinner tonight in Alice Springs (not really knowing what would be here), and headed north on the Stuart Hwy again. The first stop wasn’t far along though – we wanted to stop at the Tropic of Capricorn. This was something Debbie did on a trip with her family about 30 years ago, and her sister and her played handball over the Tropic. So we wanted to replicate that! Sadly, there’s no dotted line on the road or pavement to specifically mark the line, but it was still a fun novelty.
For lunch we stopped at Karlu Karlu (Devil’s Marbles) – it really is quite an incredible site to see, just sitting to the side of the highway. We were all feeling a bit hungry, and so holiday sandwiches came first (although, plenty of wind made that task difficult, and made for some dry bread!). But then we headed off on a couple of short walks around Karlu Karlu to explore them. It was incredible to see so many variations in all the different boulders, including so many that have naturally split over the centuries and millennia. It was wonderful that the traditional owners have given permission for visitors to still walk up onto the Nyanjiki lookout – there were some stunning views from there, and it gives an incredible perspective to how far Karlu Karlu stretches.
From there, it was only a couple of hours up the road to Banka Banka, with another stop for petrol at Threeways, just north of Tennant Creek, and a bit of a “see you soon” wave to the Barkly Hwy (which we’ll be coming back to in a bit over 2 weeks). While I have enjoyed cruising along at 130km/h this last while, I have noticed that the fuel consumption increases quite a bit! Now, thinking about it, of course that makes sense – the car (using cruise control) needs to use more accelerator, and thus more fuel, to keep it at that higher speed. But I just don’t think I’d realised how significant it was. In all the 100-110km/h land south of the border, the car was happily getting 9.5L/100km. All of a sudden at the 130km/h speed, it’s up at 11.5L/100km! Not a huge difference – but enough of a difference that’s made me need to really stop and think about the fuel stops over the next few days, and making sure I’m not cutting anything too fine.
This evening, after most of the travel diary writing was done on the deck, we wandered up the little hill just behind all the tourist park section of the property to watch the sun set. From that hill, the views over this part of the Barkly are pretty stunning. We joined another 15-20 people up on the hill – it seems we’re really starting to get into peak season for the caravans. Tonight here at Banka Banka they’re pretty full – there’s probably about 50 caravans here, and I don’t think they’ve got much room for more. And apparently it was half that last night, and less the night before. So it appears as though the northern migration of grey nomads has commenced!
After the sunset, we sat back down on the deck at our cabins and just had some cheese, dip and biscuits, a bit of leftover pizza, and some veggies. A nice simple dinner, but everyone was happy. The kids have settled into their rooms now – Eliza in with Debbie, Alexander with me, and Daniel is being a bit grown up and sleeping in his own cabin tonight. Thankfully, he’s pretty relaxed about it all – and we’re only a few steps away if he needs anything during the night.
Tomorrow, we press on the next 600km to reach Katherine – hopefully leaving nice and early to see if we can get to Bitter Springs by mid arvo for a swim!
Day 46 – Banka Banka to Katherine
Today marks halfway in our amazing trip! Excited to have made it this far, and it’s a bit overwhelming to think we still have another 46 days, and all of Queensland, to go! In the first half of the trip we’ve driven a total of 10,281km and used approximately 1026 litres of petrol! And I actually think we’ll use more on the second half of the trip… time will tell.
As planned, we got on the road really early this morning. It’s a bit easier to get up and going quickly when there’s no real space to have a slow breakfast, or for the kids to play once they get up. I did enjoy getting up a little bit earlier than everyone thought, and watching the sunrise with my coffee in hand.
We continued the trip north along the Stuart Hwy, stopping a couple of times for brief looks at some interesting things – such as Elliot, which was a staging camp for WWII soldiers heading north. And on that topic, I don’t think we fully undertstood just how critical central NT was to WWII – there are historic markers and info seemingly every 50km or 100km for something from our WWII preparation history.
We made it to Daly Waters for morning tea, and decided to head off the highway into the Daly Waters Pub, where we’ll be staying in a couple of weeks on our way back down. There really isn’t much in Daly Waters except for the pub, cabins and caravan park – but the property is so huge that it sprawls out to feel like a little town! We had a coffee here and wandered through to have a brief look at the fun things they have hanging around outside – but we wanted to make sure we saved some fun for when we get back! It’s a quirky, but fun place, and apparently the evenings have had a great atmosphere to them here. I’m really looking forward to getting back there.
Next stop was for lunch, and that was at Mataranka – the home to both the Mataranka Thermal Pool, and Bitter Springs. We headed straight to Bitter Springs, because there was at least some picnic tables there to have some lunch at. And on the way, we remembered a tip from a friend that Bitter Springs was probably the better of the two thermal pools in Mataranka. And while we didn’t go to the Mataranka Thermal Pool, we’re so happy we stayed at Bitter Springs and went for a swim there. It’s a stunning natural spring, and it has a decent current that flows as well – so you climb in at the top, and just float down. We all had pool noodles (FINALLY we got to use the 5 pool noodles that I’ve been moving in and out and in and out of the roof pod for the last 45 days!) and we just floated on them down the spring. The water was comfortably warm too – apparently it’s 34º, which I was expecting to feel warmer than it actually was. It thankfully wasn’t too busy either – there was quite a few people around, but it didn’t feel crowded at all.
We spent about 3 hours there all up, including having lunch. But thankfully, it’s only an hour and a bit up the road to Katherine from Mataranka!
We’re back in another Discovery Park in Katherine – a great 2-bedroom cabin. The park is actually a good 10 minutes down the road from the main town centre of Katherine. We dropped in to the town centre on our way through to grab a few things for dinner – and it felt immediately different to anywhere else we’ve been so far. It’s difficult to explain in a blog post – but let’s just summarise that there is a much bigger police presence just in the local shopping centre. In all honesty, I’ve been thinking a lot about it over the last 5 hours and it’s still really bothering me – not because I feel unsafe or worried at all (I don’t), but because I don’t understand the complexity of the situation, and because you’re left immediately feeling like there’s a divide in this town – and I don’t know how to explain that to our kids. I barely know how to explain it to myself. We’re doing some amazing and wonderful things in the next two days here – including connecting with and learning from some local Aboriginal artists, which I can’t wait for – and I really want to focus on that great stuff about Katherine and its surrounds and its people! But I have a feeling it may not be as simple as that.
I get it. The tension is real. The history so complex that you feel stuck in the middle – wishing it could be different. Life is like that here too – its heavy.