Mataranka Homestead

Built in 1946 by ex-soldier Victor Smith next to the Elsey National Park thermal pools, on land that was Abraham Wallace's Elsey Station from 1879 — the cattle property where Jeannie Gunn lived in 1902 and which she wrote into We of the Never Never. Cabins, motel rooms, and campsites alongside the pub and Jeannie's Kitchen restaurant. Stuart Highway, 110km south of Katherine. The thermal pools are five minutes' walk; Bitter Springs is ten minutes' drive. Mataranka means "home of the snake" in Yangmanic.