We arrived at Mataranka on Saturday afternoon, checking into the Bitter Springs Caravan Park. No time to set up, it was straight to the springs that we had heard so much about. Bitter Springs is a natural hot spring that flows in the Roper Creek. It is around 30 degrees in temperature and gently flows south. You hop in the water near the caravan park with a noodle and gently float with the current around 150 metres downstream. There are turtles to see and if you are lucky the odd fish. It's just very relaxing. The kids really enjoyed this so we had to do it quite a few times. We had a quiet evening in the park which was nice. The following day we spent the morning again at the hot spring. The kids couldn't get enough. However by 10:30am it was time to move on. There isn't too much to see between Mataranka and Alice Springs, it is a long 1100 kilometre drive. So we headed off with no real plan other than to free camp in the evening. However we did stop around lunch time at the famous Daly Waters Pub which was interesting. We then pressed on to a free camp stopping around 400km south of Mataranka.