There is nothing quite like an early morning swim at Mataranka. While Jenny kept sleeping, I headed down for a morning soak. With the steam rising off the pool, it was too good to get out and pack up the caravan. An hour later it was time to get out after having the pool virtually to myself for that time.
One of the first stops of the day was to the Gorrie Airfield, an airfield from the WW2 era which has been long abandoned and the scrub has taken over but there is a geocache there. This also was an opportunity to put the offroad caravan through its paces with skinny dirt tracks, bull dust holes and trees down. It didn’t take too long to get in but I decided to take the shortest track out which ended up not being the quickest having to remove fallen trees and to do some off road bush bashing.
Our original plan for the day was to stop at Daly Waters Pub but as it was just down the road from Mataranka we arrived at lunchtime which is way too early for us apprentice grey nomads, but would be perfect timing for the seasoned grey nomads so we continued on our journey.
The next plan was to stay at Renner Springs after catching up with the guys coming home on motorbikes. We both managed to get phone coverage – us at Elliott and them at HiWay Inn and came up with the Plan B. On arrival at Renner Springs there was no phone coverage and no spots in the caravan park to suit our van and still at least 3 hours of daylight, so we continued on our journey. The bikes ended up staying at Renner Springs but it sounded like we made the better choice to continue on.
Our Plan C was to camp at Banka Banka Station but with still daylight left and only 100 kilometres to Tennant Creek we continued on our journey. There is a pattern starting to form here.
Plan D and the final plan for the day was Tennant Creek. We arrived well before sunset (that doesn’t happen all that often). After refuelling it was around the corner to the Outback Caravan Park for the night.
