SATURDAY 29 APRIL   DALY WATERS TO MATARANKA   180kms

Today was to be a more leisurely day, now that we had made it through the bad weather.

On the way out, we detoured to take photos of the flooded fords that had stopped us reaching the Daly Waters township, yesterday.

At Larrimah, stopped for an early lunch at Fran’s Tea House, which I had read somewhere had really good pies and the like. John was most interested. We had a curried camel sausage roll each, John had a pasty, and we both had coffee. The food was very nice, but expensive at $22 for that lot.

Arrived at Mataranka at midday. I wanted to swim again in the springs there, so we booked into the Homestead Caravan Park. $22 for the site.

The whole place was very different from my memories of when we were here in 1993, but that had only been a quick call in. It seemed more run down. The thermal pool seemed smaller than I remembered, somehow. There were new looking board walks to the pool, river and Rainbow Springs.

The whole area had obviously had recent floods.

The ablutions block was pretty dirty – leaves and water everywhere. They said it was cleaned three times a day, but I saw no evidence of that, and if it happened, it was very superficial – the walls were really grubby.

There was an issue with fruit bats setting up colonies in the trees. They were using sprinklers to try to persuade them to move elsewhere.

We went for a dip in the thermal pool. It was quite pleasant. When we got out, it felt really cool – briefly! The day was actually very sultry.

We scored a new bird – a Shining Flycatcher – as we walked near the river’s edge.

After the bought lunch, neither of us was feeling all that well, so just had soup for tea.