The phrase the ‘Never Never’ was popularised in recent
history by a successful TV tourist campaign for the Northern Territory featuring
Daryl Somers warning that ‘You’ll never never know, if you never, never go’.
‘We of the Never Never’ was the title of a memoir written
early in the 20th century by Jeanie Gunn. It tells the story of how she, as a refined
young lady from Melbourne, followed her new husband to a remote station near
Mataranka. In the 1980s a movie was made about the book and its legacy has provided
Mataraka with a legend on which to build a thriving tourist industry. Well,
thriving by remote NT standards. It includes three dry and dusty caravan parks
without a blade of grass in sight, two service stations, a small grocery store,
the old replica homestead, which was the location of the movie and a park with
several statues of people resembling the movie’s lead characters.
Mataranka’s other popular, and more natural tourist
attractions are the thermal springs. One thermal spring is close to the
Mataranka Homestead Resort (interpret resort rather loosely) and is a natural spring
of warm ground water, which was utilised by some enterprising WW2 soldiers to
create an enticing swimming hole. The water is warm, crystal clear and rather
pleasant.
Eleven kilometres away is another thermal spring known as
Bitter Springs. This entirely natural spring meanders for about 300 metres. The
order of the day is to get in at one end and float down with the current as far
as you can go and then get out and walk back and do it all again. The water
temperature is about 34 degrees slightly lower than the outside temperature of
36. We obviously missed the tourist memo to bring a pool noodle and as the
water is a couple of metres deep it meant we had to tread water as the current
washed us down stream. It was a wonderful experience and after the third time
we were rather weary.
Mataranka remains the home of the Never Never and is
certainly very, very worth a visit.
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