The best place on Earth - Mataranka Springs

After spending a few days in a windy dust hole, I was ready for a change... and a nice long soak in something.

Matatanka Springs was like a desert oasis. The trees around the river and the spring reminded me of a rain forest - although Ben assures me that it is NOT a rain forest. He did launch in to a description of what kind of bush it was but I switched off due to lack of interest.

The water in the spring was 34 degrees. Not too hot and not too cold. We all stayed in there for ages floating around in the crystal clear waters. It was the most amazing place...

After we had soaked all the red dust out of our pores, Kris and I headed back to the caravan to feed the kids and do schoolwork while Ben and James headed to the pub.

Once we had the kids all sorted, Kris and I joined our two extremely intoxicated husbands at the pub for the trivia night. My kids were sooo excited. It seems their favourite thing to do of a night now is go to the pub. There is always entertainment and dancing and usually Daddy will buy them a lemonade.

Even though the boys had had enough alcohol to render them useless in the child care dept... they were obviously not too wasted as they went on to place 2nd in the trivia contest. I maintain that the reason why kris and I did not win is because we had 6 children clammering all over us begging for pink lemonade and hot chips.

Kylah entertained the crowds after the quiz had finished. She got up on stage with the microphone and sang and told jokes. She had the whole 100 or so patrons upstanding while she sang Advance Australia Fair and then launched in to 'oh I just can't wait to be king' from the lion king movie. She performs with such passion and gusto... I really need to get her in to more performance activities.

Unfortunately we only had one night in Matatanka. It was such an amazing place though. I wish we had had two nights there!!!

The next morning, after a quick hike and swim, we headed off to check out Cutta Cutta Caves. We arrived at the destination and all looked around a bit bewildered. We were in the middle of flat, dry, barren scrub. Where were we supposed to see these marvellous caves??? The bloke took our money and then sent us on a walk out the back of his small office. I was a bit dubious about what we were about to see. As far as I could see, there was nothing of interest for kms around us.
Then, all of a sudden we came to an opening in the ground with some steps going down. Down we all went and to my complete surprise we discovered the most enormous and beautiful limestone caves. We only got to go in about 500m but they go back a lot further.
Jago spent the whole time singing 'uh oh... we're in trouble' which ruined the serenity slightly.
They were so beautiful... and huge too!!! I could not believe these giant caves were hiding beneath our feet.

I have so much more to write but I have to go. we are about to lose coverage as we head into kakadu. I will try to catch up in the next few days and do a whole lot of posts next tues or wed. whenever it is that we arrive into darwin.

xx