This post deviates from the general theme of 3D printing and software curiosities. It is ‘ancient’ history from an old travel blog I was writing while traveling around Australia.
So apparently Mataranka is supposed to be a really awesome thermal pool, but at the risk of trampling on the hard work of the Australian Tourism Commission and Jeannine Gunn: the place is nothing short of a swamp in the wet season, although minus the familiar ‘swamp stank’ that would waft into Broome during the late evening breeze, seriously though? I think I am missing Broome and would take ‘swamp stank’ any day of the week compared to what you get in Brisbane. Now it would seem as though I have written myself into a corner. Ha! Never fear dear readers, my good friend New Paragraph is here to save the day!
We didn’t get into Mataranka till fairly late at night, we had about fifteen minutes of daylight left to pitch the tent, cook up some grub and hunker down for the night… Well we managed to get the tent pitched. Luckily the camp kitchen had a light. Unluckily it also attracted an entire swamp load of assorted flying bugs and mosquitoes as well. Random Trivia Time:
Mosquitoes are attracted to people with higher concentrations of cholesterol.
I think I got bitten once, and Meech assured me that she was bitten ‘a zillion times’. Guess who has the better cholesterol out of us? Anyway, after our bug filled pasta (mmm protein) and the umpteenth Meech cry ‘They be eating me! Eating me alive!’ we crawled into our tent and dreamed of mechanical mosquito eating robots.
The following morning we checked out the local breeding ground for all the previous night’s bugs, err, I mean the Mataranka thermal pools. We then continued south to Tennant Creek, like many a weary traveller before us, and stopped at the old telegraph station that was on the original overland telegraph line. The next day we headed east to ‘the Isa’.
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