Packing up and leaving the Three-Ways was something we had all been looking forward to since completing our little holiday back to home. It was made all the more enjoyable by grinning like an idiot every time I saw a NSW number plate or got a comment from fellow travellers about the resounding victory we had witnessed the night before. That's right the mighty maroons had smashed the blues and enabled all us travelling cane toads to hold our heads high for yet another year. Well done boys!!

Back on the road and heading north it was getting obvious to all that the cool weather was going to be a thing of the past. Our first stop on the road was in Elliot for a bit of smoko. As the story goes we Bostocks have quite a connection with the history of this little town, in particular the cattle property Beetaloo. Originally part of the first cattle stations and eventually becoming a small service centre for the growing cattle stations, Elliot, with its good supply of water, and eventually a railway stop and telegraph line, was used heavily during the development of the northern territory and even more so during the war years. There is much evidence of this in the town and also a lot showing the contribution of the local Aboriginal community to the area as stockmen, soldiers and guides to the new arrivals into what is some pretty harsh land.

Sad to say Elliot has lost a lot of its appeal and now is not a very popular place to stop, with many people commenting to us about the very shabby condition of the town. However it does have most things you require when travelling. Eventually we found a nice spot at the local ANZAC park to have a break before heading off towards Daly Waters.

Now to say Daly Waters is popular with the grey nomads would be like saying QLD has played some alright footy in the last six years! We arrived at about 2:30pm and were fortunate to get one of the last four powered sites available that day! All around us were caravans and trailers and tents being erected, people yarning and sharing an ale, as well as the bloke directing all this chaos. The cars and vans just kept coming, it was like watching the tide coming in. They were just piled into one of the overflow sites with no power. No-one seemed to mind though, and after our first trip over to the Daly Waters Pub we knew why! We were told to book dinner early so that is what we did. After a quick chat to some neighbours and a quiet beer, we were set up and showered ready to head over and join the crowd!

We had been told by many people "don't miss the barra at Daly Waters", so with this in mind Kylz had booked us on the 7:00pm sitting of the barra and beef BBQ dinner and show. They have three sittings to cater for such large numbers in a fairly small BBQ area! After a couple of beers and a feed of the best cooked barra we have eaten in a long time we then got swept up into the local entertainers show. A true blue local with plenty to say on nearly all subjects and a fair commentary on many issues, including travellers from other states, that had the whole crowd in stitches. He topped his routine off with some of his own songs and it was pretty clear he had won over the huge crowd for another night.

The morning saw us witness the tide going out almost, as nearly all the park emptied out onto the Stuart H/way either north and south and the staff at Daly Waters no doubt, breathe a sigh of relief, at least until after lunch when it all just happens again!

Fuelled up and on the road we made our way onto Mataranka. Our chosen camp was the Old Mataranka Homestead, just east of town along the Roper River, which is home to one of the popular local hot springs. The girls were rapt in the warm thermal pools and between them and the resident wallabies and peacocks they had plenty to do while Kylz and I enjoyed the very relaxed surrounds. While at the Homestead we had another "night out" so to speak as we all headed down and enjoyed another quality pub style dinner and one man show.

Mataranka has a couple of thermal pools and for us the trip to Bitter Springs, which is only up the road on the north side of town, was a real highlight! The water is clear as crystal and flows endlessly creating a gentle current that easily carries you from the top entry point to the lower foot bridge crossing. Quick tip for all future visitors: remember a pool noodle and thongs, helps to enjoy the float down stream (especially with a kid hanging off your neck!!) and the thongs save the, by now prune tender, feet from the rocks on the short walk back. Also swimming back up takes some big effort as the current is deceptive!? Bit of a trap for new players! The whole swim and morning had the girls very excited and it took some convincing for them to head back to the car.

The morning had started out with some truly top shelf fair on show. We had stopped at the Territory Manor, another tourist park with a very unique show on offer. The small pond used as a feature is stocked with almost metre long barra that are trained to be hand fed and lifted out of the water! Now this had the girls amazed as they had never seen Dad catch fish that big, well not yet anyway. To add a bit of class to this awesome fish show was the fresh made latte and homemade scones and cream we all enjoyed afterwards!! Very clean grounds and amenities left a good impression on Kylz and I and it is one place we would like to stay at if we ever get the chance again.

Mataranka really is the gateway to the famous Roper River and having fished there once in the past was keen to hear that people were still getting barra at this time of the year and not far down the river. While fishing was not on the menu for me at this stage (you really need access to good safe river banks or crossings when you are without a boat) it was very encouraging to here blokes speaking of catching good barra, and left me keen for the time when it would be my turn to wet a line in the barra rich waters of the top end.

Our next stop on this trip was one I personally had been looking forward to since we left in January. We covered the 100km from Mataranka to Katherine at our usual steady pace and were happy to be greeted by our good friends Nick & Kerryn Window as well as our first introduction to their baby girl Elyse, on their property "Nickez Downes" a few kays south of town. Elyse had just celebrated her first birthday and was as excited as our girls were to meet some new people. Now having set up and with Nick and I catching up on this and that, in between trips to the cool room for refreshments, that's right I said cool room. Well it does get pretty hot up here!!? It only took the girls about five minutes to get the low down on all of Nick & Kerryn's animals and start pestering us to go feed them or collect eggs or pat something or other! This went on for the whole week we were there and it was all we could do to put them off until after 5pm.

Now Katherine has plenty of shopping for a small town and really does remind us both a lot of Mount Isa. Katherine has plenty to see and do for the new visitor, however having been here a few times previously and together, and knowing our path would bring us back this way in a few weeks, we were really not in too big a hurry to do much more then kick back and enjoy the good company of our friends at what we now call the " Nickez Downes B+B". Not that we weren't kept busy though!? Nick had a new piece of farm gear he had recently purchased that needed some work? "Knackers" had me hard at it on a full strip and refit on one of the agricultural industries most well known types of equipment. The Fordson Major!!! 35HP of ground tearing, hard working, farm equipment that enabled much of this wide brown land to be brought under control and made to bear forth the fruits of many a farmer's hard labour!! Sounds cool eh? Wait til you see the pics! Well maybe we did a few little jobs on the old girl and got her cracking, but the smile it put on Nick's and my faces when it was fired up and being driven around amongst our hooting and high fiving was priceless, even if the girls were looking rather puzzled by our reaction to a pretty small tractor coughing and spluttering around the paddock. Women just don't get it sometimes!!

Fireworks are something we all enjoy, and the Territory gets to let rip every year on Territory Day July 1. Now having missed this date we were fortunate that Nick was loaded with some excess fireworks that needed to be disposed of!? So doing the responsible thing we spent our last evening "getting rid" of these nasty old fireworks!! The girls were keen and got right into it as much as we could let them. Good fun for all, except Elyse, who spent the whole time asleep in her room and Rusty the dog, safely locked in his pen.

Enjoying some relatively quiet days was just what we both wanted after a pretty hectic couple of weeks previous. It gave us time to plan our next stage which would see us given the chance to judge for ourselves one way or the other, an answer, to the age old question of Kakadu or rather sadly as some often say Kakadont! Really, that is what you here from a lot of people on the road. Given that we have found a lot of places more favourable then not we were both keen to get into Kakadu and see it for ourselves.