riverECHO

5,721 kilometers around Australia.

Once we reached the Stuart Highway just north of Tenant Creek, we turned 90 degrees to the right and started driving straight north towards Darwin. We spent one night in back of a Shell gas station in Camooweal (don’t worry mom, it was an official campground) and another night at the Dunmarra Roadhouse, where two beers that we purchased at the bar cost the same price as our night of camping – $11. We pushed right on through to Katherine the following day, knowing that we would be returning to this deserted land with BJ’s mom in about a month. As we drove north, about 1,000 km above the Tropic of Capricorn, the landscape instantly changed from wide open brush where you could see on for miles to dense but short trees. The air also seemed to thicken. I suppose all along we were expecting the outback to be barren, desolate, and in no way survivable. Perhaps desolate, with only the occasional town of population 20, but it sustained much more life than I was expecting. We especially loved coming upon intersections with dirt roads where about ten different signs would name a town and its distance. We couldn’t in fact see anything off in the distance but it was pretty cool to think about the people living just that much further out in this arid part of the country.

Is it a bad sign when you seek out a hot spring because it is actually cooler than the air temperature? My entire body seemed to swell up as we entered Katherine. The heat hit me like a wall and it was all of a sudden hard to think straight. Everyone who knows me well knows that I am not the most cheerful person in the heat and having anticipated the heat for a while, I am doing my best to not move any more than is necessary. We have also found that hot springs and swimming pools are our new best friends. We took a delightful dip in Mataranka, about an hour south of Katherine. The thermal pool was crystal clear, the perfect cool temperature and surrounded by thousands of noisy flying foxes dangling from their feet in the trees overhead. It was completely free and well worth the detour. We stayed in the Katherine Gorge National Park campground last night which also happened to have a pool (slightly murky but refreshing) and a poolside bar and grille where a T-bone steak by the pool after our sunset stroll was definitely in order. Tonight we are camping closer to town, but within walking distance to the local hot springs a.k.a. cold springs. This is another series of free pools of crystal clear water that flows through a narrow gorge with a rocky bottom. The temperature is just about perfect and we will definitely be returning to these healing waters again in the morning.