The Stuart highway continues on in a beeline North. Passing scrub and grassland with cattle grazing as we go.
cattle town of Elliott, the land just gets drier and drier and the vegetation sparser

Brunch at Renner Sorings a lovely old cattle station again turning their hand to tourism.
Great bacon sandwich
John on his 650 is just a head of us at each stop as we pull in he is just leaving.

This area is the dividing line between the seasonally wet Top End and the dry we see a change to to a more rocky terrain.mesa and small escarpment are dotted across this huge land. You can see for miles and miles the road had only the occasional bend. Slowly the scrub becomes more lush the trees are more Palm like and termite hills are abundant.

We turn off the road to head for the hot springs Mataranka

The homestead is a holiday park camping sites available but the areas are a bit dusty. Cabins are a bit tired but spacious there is a motel but we didn't look at those. It's like a tropical holiday camp from a time long ago.

The area is surround with tall palms and eucalyptus trees a club house restaurant where you book in seems to be where everyone gathers as wide screen tv,s have the sports channels on.

We choose a cabin by the time we had unpacked it was dark so we didn't get a chance for a swim. We walked over to get some food. A small wallaby was snuffling in the leaves around the cabins, we were told to watch out for snakes and spiders. John joins us for a bite to eat. We spend a very pleasant evening recounting our trip so far. Made us laugh as we all suddenly thought wow look where we have been.

Night time was a bit erie cabin was very quiet you could hear the cockroaches and other insects scraping away bit unsettling took we ages to get to sleep.