We left Katherine, on Sunday after several days at The Low level Caravan Park and stopped the night at Dunmarra on our 3482km trip home. Monday night we stopped at a place called Banka Banka, which has quite an interesting history. This Cattle station is 100 km north of Tennant Creek and was the first operational pastoral station established in the Northern Territory. The most successful station owners,Philip & Mary Ward ran the station from 1941 to 1970. During this time they employed up to 300 Aboriginal people on the station. Mary Ward was passionate to see the local people educated, and personally funded a private school on the property and made attendance compulsory for the Aboriginal children.She and her husband did not agree with the policy of removing part-Aborigines from their mothers. They sent children to school at Alice Springs at their own expense until 1961, when due to her efforts a government school opened at Banka Banka. She also provided scholarships for older children who wanted to continue their education in Adelaide. The property now belongs to the Kidman Company, the largest pastoral company in Australia and employs no aboriginal workers locally. The Caravan Park which occupies the site of the restored original homestead continues to honour the memories of the pioneering Ward family. The Banka Banka mudbrick homestead is a single story, rectangular building with a pitched roof consisting of a timber roof frame and corrugated metal roof sheeting, mudbrick walls, concrete floors, surrounded by a veranda supported by concrete posts. The building consists of three rooms. The homestead was partly reconstructed in 2001. I took several photos at Banka Banka, several of which show a donkey. Remember the "donkey at the museum farm stay earlier in our trip? However this is a real donkey not a water heater. This little fellow, who is four months old, was found, with his dead mother nearby, when some cattle were being mustered "over the road" which in Outback parlance could mean anything from a few metres to many kilometres.

Tuesday 11th August. We left Banka Banka this morning and we are staying the night at Tennant Creek, 508 kms from Alice Springs. Tennant Creek has a population of approx 3000, 1500 of which are Aboriginal. Aboriginal employment and education is encouraged and in our short stay we noticed many Aboriginal people employed at the park where we are staying and also doing council work in parks, roads and gardens. It is quite hot here with an average August temperature of 36c. Today was 32c, but felt quite a bit hotter.

On the way to Tennant Creek we stopped at a tourist attraction called the Devils Marbles. In the Aboriginal mythology the Devils Marbles are the eggs of the rainbow serpent. The traditional Aboriginal owners of the area regard the marbles as having extraordinary powers. Damage to them can have life threatening consequences for their custodians.

Imagine their distress when in 1953 an eight tonne rock was taken from the area to be placed on John Flynn's grave in Alice Springs (the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor service).

A similar thing happened in 1980, when a rock from the Devils Pebbles (a similar area north of Tennant Creek), was removed without consulting the traditional owners.

The pebble was returned in 1981, as was the marble taken for John Flynn's grave, but it took until 1998 for that to happen