Bitter Springs? Maybe Beautiful Springs is More Appropriate!

This morning we headed back up through Mataranka to Bitter Springs. These thermal springs result in a meandering creek of which a bit over a hundred metres has been set up for people to swim in. The ideal way is to start at the end nearest the springs themselves and float gently down to the bottom, return back to the start by way of the path and do it all over again.
Max thought this wonderful and when the Smith family from Bunbury, who we had previously run into at the Leanyer Recreation Park in Darwin, arrived Max again had some other children to play with.
After about an hour and a half we had an early lunch and set off for the Mataranka Homestead once again, this time to watch ‘We of the Never Never’. Given one side of my family spent many years on stations in the North West of WA I thought this was particularly interesting to get Max to watch and then discuss over the next few days. To top things off while we were there the Smiths arrived again and the kids got to reprise their morning all over again a the adjoining thermal springs. Best moment was when Tom (7) asked me why we were following them and we were able to point out to him that it was hard for us to be following them as we were always already there when they arrived.

Rainbow pool, the source of water for this thermal pool

Watching Max swim this morning brought home to me again how far he has come in the last week or so – I don’t think there is any way he would have been prepared to set off down a hundred metre creek, pretty much all deeper than he can stand – on his own even last week, now however he is happy and confident with the thought (although the fact that he was going with the current certainly helped).
Tomorrow it is time to start heading towards the WA border, first stop Katherine for the new tyre and then our intention is to stay in the Gregory and Keep River National Parks for a few days before we get to Kununurra, so I guess entry’s will back up a little again until we can get reception and load everything up again.