I'll do the first bit of this one (Mark) because the laughs were on me. After losing the T-piece that joined our trailer to the car, I wedged in a tough bit of stick that I thought at the time would be better than a skinny screwdriver that would bend and fall out. I drove accordingly like I had eggs on the dashboard, taking every corner slowly while avoiding sharp turns, crawling over any large bumps and reducing my speed on the highway. It was only intended as a temporary fix, thinking I would pick up something at the next town. That next town was Pine Creek and they had nothing. The join looked OK so onwards to Katherine we went, about 260km from our start that morning. Driving into Katherine I was out of gas and pulling into the BP station I had to cross their quite steep and angled gutter. As this made some funny angles between Prado and Trakkie, cracks and crunches were heard and in my side mirrors I noticed Trakkie looking very close to the ground. Luckily we were off the road doing walking pace and the safety chains did their job in stopping Trakkie from hitting the ground. I couldn't get anything under the nose of Trakkie to jack it up so with a big grunt managed to sit it back in place and this time dropped a big screwdriver in and taped that up. The hunt was on for a new T-piece.
No-one in Katherine appeared to have one, however, I found one bloke from an engineering place that had some trailer parts and explained my problem to him and his mate. When I got to the part about the stick he said out loud, "you put a f%$#@& what in there?". His mate was laughing loudly at this stage while I was trying to convince them I really wasn't an idiot tourist who didn't know what he was doing. When I told them it had held up since Kakadu they were a bit impressed with that but of course that's only because "we grow tough trees up here in the Territory". While they were cracking jokes he found a big bolt that could be drilled and welded to resemble our T-piece. Before going ahead with that he sent me off to another place that "should" have one but of course it didn't so back I go and him and his mate were still in a jolly mood thanks to my story. His make-shift T-piece was actually quite good and he turned out to be a good bloke. I can hear the stories now that him and his mate will be telling in weeks to come about that stupid Victorian…
The second bit of this blog is by me (Sharyn). Being the indecisive 'on holiday' folk that we are, even when we were in Katherine, we still weren't sure on where we were going to stay for the night. I went in to the supermarket here to stock up and the girl on the checkout said "What's on for the rest of the day" and I said how we were travelling through and she said "Well you have to go and stay out at Mataranka, you'll love it". Being a big believer in fate, off to Mataranka we went, and yes we did love it! Our two night stay turned into three and we even got to have a snorkel. No that's not a typo, we actually all snorkelled in the outback! You may of heard of the thermal pools/hot springs they have out this way - Mataranka Thermal pool and Bitter Springs. Bubbling up at a beautiful 32-34 degrees, just heavenly on the old muscles and joints! Well these springs are also brilliantly crystal clear, and at Bitter Springs we donned the snorkel gear and cruised down the current, looking in amazement of the underwater world inside a creek. And the bonus was that was like having a big bath at the same time. Considering we haven't had a bath for 5 months, it was pretty awesome.
The other cool thing at Mataranka was its connection with a classic old Aussie book written back in the early 1900's called 'We of the Never Never'. I never got to read it at secondary school so Mum gave me her copy to read when we were in Broome, and I just finished it before we arrived here. Based on a true story, the author Jeannie Gunn tells her story of arriving out in the never never with her husband and living on a cattle station, and its many hardships that followed. We got to visit the site of her original 'Elsey Homestead' (there is no trace of any buildings now just a memorial plaque), we went to the Elsey Cemetery where her husband Aeneas (and other characters from the book) were buried, and got to see and go into a replica of her old homestead, made for the movie recreation of her story, back I think in the 80's. The park where we stayed in Mataranka (the Mataranka Homestead) screened the movie 'We of the Never Never' daily in the bistro at 12, so the kids and I got to watch the movie and then visiting the sites all made so much more sense for them. It was like seeing history come to life!
Next stop...who knows??? Somewhere down south, home is getting closer by the day. Bit sad and bit exciting at the same time. But still more adventures yet to come!
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