Arriving @ Mataranka, by Tom

We set out early to get to our next stop, Mataranka. The drive took about 4 hours with two stops at Newcastle Waters and Daly Waters where we had some lunch while apostlebirds overwhelmed us and tried to steal it! Once, we got distracted by a bowerbird and an apostlebird tried to grab and fly away with a whole "Cruskit".

Mataranka has lots of hot springs that are rivers that are heated from under the earth. The caravan park that we stayed in (Mataranka Resort) had its own hot spring so we walked down and had a swim in our bathers. The caravan park has lots of wild animals like wallabies and peacocks. There was a tree snake that slithered through our neighbour's caravan and up a tree. After that we got a bit nervous when we went to bed because we didn't want a snake to slide into our caravan and wake us up!

Here are copies of some of my drawings from my journal. They are from our trip along the Stuart Hwy up the middle of Australia including the Devil's Marbles.

Dad's caption: THE DEVIL with one of his marbles!

We saw one of these slithering around the caravan park!