I was rudely woken by Guy, he was heading off home and wanted to get a long day in. He had left me a few tourist guides and had advised that the Homestead Resort at Mataranka would be better to stay at than Katherine.

He left soon after and as I was now awake, but still tired I decided to hit the road as well. The first section to Daly Waters was a 280km run straight west

Here is a series of pictures of the road out that way, all single lane sealed, I took it easy to start with as I had nearly collected a roo.

This picture shows the runoff channels that have been graded into the side of the road about every 50m or so, there must be heaps of water flowing in them during the wet!

I got to the Stuart Highway around 10.30am and had some breakfast. There were a couple of other bikers fuelling up, one on an 07 Wee Strom, the other had a GSX. They were doing the west coast until Geraldton where the strom would be trucked home, but the GSX would be riding back to Sydney, I may see him on my travels down that way.

After that it was the main highway to Mataranka

I duly booked into the Homestead Resort. This was a mistake as it was not a caravan park as such, but a caravan resort. There was tent sites, but no camp kitchen, no shady seats with tables to sit at except for the bar, pool area where they had a kiosk etc. Not suitable for traveller that was lightly geared. It was some of my fault, but I was feeling quite crook, not sure whether it was heat or not, I had no headache though, but felt unwell all day. I did absolutely nothing after pitching the tent under a shady tree, it was too hot and I had no energy.
I went down for happy hour later on and had 3 cans but did not feel like drinking, crikey, I must be crook!

Had a light snack for dinner then watched a movie on the laptop, Gothika, before it was cool enough to sleep later on. One thing that brought back memories of home was when I had a shower just on dusk, the skies were alive with Flying Foxes (fruit bats) heading out to their feeding grounds, just like the Fitzroy River in Rocky on dusk 🙂
The resort was well set up and had thermal pools and access to the national park, I was just not in tourist mode and thermal springs in that heat made no sense, now ice cold springs would have helped a lot 🙂

Day – 449km
Trip – 5831km
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