Ryan’s Journal: Days 40 – 42

Day 40

Distance travelled: 142km

Today we packed up at Katherine, drove to Cutta Cutta Caves where we went on a cave tour. The caves were huge! The caves are dry caves so a sparkly crystal showed on a few different rocks. It had a very high ceiling that is full of water during the wet.

We got to Mataranka, where we set up camp. The springs there were amazing! Bitter spring was a river, but it was 34 degrees. You get in at one end and the current carries you down to the end, where you get out, walk back a short distance and do it again. There was also a ladder at the end where we jumped off into the warm water. We stayed there all afternoon before we headed to another spring, Mataranka thermal spring. It wasn’t as natural but it was still great! It was just as hot and in a large concrete area with a sandy bottom.

Day 41

Distance travelled: 381km

We were only able to spend one night in Mataranka so we had to pack up and head off. We were trying to get to Butterfly Springs. We stopped on the way at Roper Bar, and at the store there we had an ice-cream. The Roper River, which is huge, separates Limmen National Park from Arnem Land.  We had a quick stop there but kept going.

A few of the butterflies at Butterfly Springs

Butterfly Springs was a cold spring, and on the cliffs there were thousands of butterflies! I walked up to the wall and all the butterflies flew around me, some landing on me! We had a swim after we’d set up and went under the small trickle of a waterfall.

Day 42

Distance travelled: 226k

We left Butterfly Springs with a big driving day ahead of us. We drove on a rough dirt road for about six hours! But we did stop a couple of times. We stopped at the Southern Lost City where we walked around the rock formations that look like an old city. Next we stopped for lunch at an aboriginal town called Borroloola. We bought some hot food from a café and sat down for a while.

Southern Lost City

We drove from Borroloola to King Ash Bay where we set up camp by a river. King Ash Bay is a fishing club that is a community of people that come up here during the dry seasons and do all sorts of things. They have weekly fishing tournaments, a little golf course where they play throughout the week and a ‘triathlon’, which includes darts, golf and carpet bowls. Dad and I went and played a few holes of the golf course.

We lit a fire and Dad cooked dinner over the open fire.