Aboriginal Culture Tours, Hot Springs & More
On a 1-day visit to the Manyallaluk Aboriginal community, a 90-minute drive southeast from Katherine, you chat with Aborigines about how they balance traditional ways with modern living; take a short bushwalk to look for native medicines and bush tucker like green ants (they're refreshing!); try lighting a fire with two sticks, weaving baskets, throwing spears, painting on bark, and playing a didgeridoo; and take a dip in a water hole. You can buy locally made Aboriginal art and artifacts at better prices than you may find elsewhere. Lunch is a barbecue featuring stuff like high-grade kangaroo filet, kangaroo tail, Scotch filet steak, or barramundi cooked on hot coals. Some visitors rush into these tours and expect the community to be a kind of Aboriginal theme park with a new attraction every 10 minutes, but that's not how it is. It's an unstructured experience (this is the community's home), so it's up to you to take part.
A 1-day tour from Katherine costs A$177 (US$142/UK£71) for adults and A$88 (US$70/UK£35) for children 5 to 15, or A$135 (US$108/UK£54) adults and A$78 (US$62/UK£31) for kids if you drive yourself. There are basic camping facilities, including tent sites and powered and unpowered sites. The last 35km (22 miles) of road is unsealed (unpaved), and rental cars will be insured only if they are four-wheel-drive. The tour runs Monday through Friday from April to October, but hours may be reduced, or the place may close, in the Wet. Call ahead before setting off no matter what the time of year, because sometimes it may be closed for cultural reasons. Call Manyallaluk -- The Dreaming Place (tel. 08/8975 4727), or book through Travel North.
About 110km (68 miles) south of Katherine, you can soak your aches away at the Mataranka Thermal Pools. The man-made pools are fed by 93°F (34°C) spring water, which bubbles up from the earth at a rate of 16,495 liters (4,124 gal.) per minute! It's a little paradise, surrounded by palms, pandanus, and a colony of flying foxes. The pools are open 24 hours and admission is free. They are 7km (4 1/3 miles) along Homestead Road, off the Stuart Highway 1.5km (1 mile) south of Mataranka township. They make a welcome stop on the long drive from Alice Springs.
If you can't be bothered to drive to Mataranka, you can soak in the pleasantly warm Katherine Hot Springs, under shady trees 3km (2 miles) from town on Riverbank Drive. Entry is free.
At the School of the Air, Giles Street (tel. 08/8972 1833), you can sit in on an 800,000-sq.-km (312,000-sq.-mile) "classroom" as children from the Outback do their lessons by radio. Forty-five-minute tours begin on the hour at 9, 10, and 11am from mid-March to mid-November. Tours also run during school holidays and public holidays, minus the on-air classes. Admission is A$5 (US$4/UK£2) for adults and A$2 (US$1.60/UK80p) for school-age kids.
Mike Keighley of Far Out Adventures (tel. 0427/152 288) runs upmarket tailor-made tours that include areas around Katherine such as the 5,000-sq.-km. (1,930-sq.-mile or 1.2-million-acre) Elsey Cattle Station, 140km (87 miles) southeast of Katherine, made famous as the setting of the Aussie book and film We of the Never Never. Meet children of the Mangarrayi Aborigines, sample bush tucker, learn a little bush medicine, and swim in a vine-clad natural "spa-pool" in the Roper River. Mike has been accepted as an honorary family member of the Mangarrayi people and is a mine of information about Aboriginal culture and the bush.
