Category Archives: Northern Territory

WESTERN BOWERBIRD

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These birds seem to occur all over Northern Australia. They are hyperactive, noisy little guys with elaborate bowers. The purple plume on the back of their heads rises when they want to impress another bird.

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The male builds a bower and decorates it with white and silver objects to impress the female. The female builds a nest elsewhere to lay her eggs.

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This impressive bower was decorated with white snail shells, bits of broken glass and crumpled wads of silver foil. The males are incredibly fussy about the arrangement of the decoration around their bower. If you drop in an extra snail shell, the bird will quickly pick it up and remove it.

MATARANKA

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Roper River Undergrowth

12 miles down the Roper River from Mataranka is the Elsey  National Park campground (called 12 mile yards) It’s much cleaner and quieter than the Mataranka Homestead campground. There are some excellent walks and interesting tracks to cycle along.

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Creek Crossing No.2

We discovered an old National Parks service road and decided to see where it led. Two hours and 4 creek crossings later, we emerged at Mataranka Falls.

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Mataranka Falls

Beautiful clear water, huge stands of Livingstonia Palms and a couple of freshwater crocodiles. The kind of place you don’t want to leave, especially when we had two hours of peddling to get home.

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Pandanas and Livistonia Palms

Livistonia  and Pandanas palms turn the Roper River and surrounding wetlands into a magnificent oasis. Most of the surrounding area is a dry savannah landscape.

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Paperbark Swamp Wetlands

Dry Savanna Country

Dry Savannah Country at Breakneck Speed

Once away from the river the country becomes hot and dry. Open eucalypt country with dry grass and lots of anthills – completely different to the area fringing the river.

Barb Wire Penetrating Anthill

Barb Wire Penetrating Anthill

How did they do that? Poke a fence right through an anthill.

Clear Water

Clear Water

The creeks feeding into Roper River are spring fed and have a high calcium content. This makes the water incredibly clear. It also causes calcium deposits to build up in certain areas.

We came across this little creek that had built up a hard limestone gutter over the years, making it look almost man-made.

Limestone lined Creek

Limestone lined Creek

Before we left Mataranka we decided to stay a night at the Homestead and have dinner in their restaurant. We found a reasonably isolated spot and set up camp. I went for a walk up along the river. When I came back a guy with four weird tiny little horses had camped nearby. I went and said g’day to him and he told me he was with the Moscow Circus and 40 trucks and trailers were following him! Within an hour the place was overun.

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I expected lions, tigers and elephants, but all the Moscow Circus has are four freaky little horses – I think they are to frighten children.

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The Circus was incredibly well organised They had all moved off  in small groups by 9:00 next morning – bound for Alice Springs.

PUBS

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Croydon sprang up in the 1880’s. It was a gold rush town, swelling to over 7000 people and 122 pubs. The Club Hotel is the sole survivor, which gives a clue to the quality of their beer. It’s a typical Queensland pub of the era – all timber, high ceilings, wide veranda with outside seats. a great place for a beer and a meal.

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Normanton’s “Purple Pub” is built in the same wide veranda, high ceiling style, but is an unusual combination of two separately roofed buildings. I doubt it was called the purple pub when it was built in the late 1800’s –  purple wasn’t invented till way after that. It’s now the best known landmark in town.

A green butchery has sprung up since we were last there, but it doesn’t seem to be attracting near as much attention.

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This is a shot I took of the National Hotel, Mt Morgan back in the early 80’s. It was a great pub with lots of character. I went back to Mt Morgan 5 years later, intending to stay in the National, only to find it had been converted to a Methodist Church!

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Returning to Mt Morgan this trip, we drove up the hill to see what had become of the old pub.

Well, the Methodist  church had vacated and it was now a private residence. What a shame, such a great example of over the top, goldrush, hotel architecture should have drifted away from it’s intended purpose.

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Daly Waters Pub is one of the NT’s most famous. Built  on a busy droving route in the 1930’s, it was once a watering hole for thirsty cattlemen. Today it attracts tourists from all over the world. There are walls adorned with signed thongs, bras, knickers and foreign banknotes, marking the travels of thousands of visitors enjoying a rowdy beer.

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Couldn’t resist taking a photo of this colour coordinated lady taking a photo of someone drinking a pint outside the pub.