Saturday 3rd February 2007. Banka Banka to Katherine.

On the road again and our first stop is Elliott before we head for lunch at the Outback's most famous pub, Daly Waters.

Daly Waters outback township was for a short time an international airline hub that grew to accommodate the expanding aerodrome and its staff.

The post office building is the most interesting still standing in town, after the pub that is. Constructed in the early post war years as a result of the need to replace the old telegraph station, in 1949/50 contracts were let by the Department of Works for the building and five houses for Department of Civil Aviation Staff. Completed in 1951, the post office building was converted to a police station at a cost of £5,000 in 1963.

Apart from use as a police station the building has been a residence, courthouse, dental clinic, Stock Inspector's residence, community hall and informal school.

One claim to fame for the township was that in 1961 at a Daly Waters race meeting one jockey took a short cut through the bush and won by six lengths. Protests by the other jockey's and enraged punters ensued and the second placed jockey suggested a round of fisticuffs to decide the winner. The crowd were enjoying the entertainment when the local police stepped in and stopped the fight declaring the race a draw. The committee declared the second placed jockey as the winner and all retired like I do now to the Daly Waters pub.

The pub was established in 1930 and it is an eclectic mix of flags, old number plates, currency, an old telephone box and even a traffic light that they claim is the most remote in Australia. This pub is a unique building filled with treasures.

The Daly Waters pub also can claim to have been the site of the first McDonald's in the Northern Territory as well as the shortest lived, most remote, least visited and most limited menu McDonald's in the world. The restaurant was built and demolished on June 7th 1991, opening at 11am and closing at 6pm as a charity stunt for the Variety Club.

The origins of a pub in this area date from earlier than 1930, infact back to the days of the drovers moving cattle from the East .

Our next stop is Mataranka Homestead and Elsey National Park where there are more bats than I have ever seen.

The natural thermal pools here are associated with the massive limestone formation that extends north of Katherine and out to the Queensland border with the wet season rainfall being absorbed by the porous limestone and heated by the earth to a warm 34 degrees celsius before release as crystal clear spring water.

Long known to the Mangarrayi and Yangman peoples it wasn't until world war II when soldiers stationed at Mataranka dammed the spring that it became a relaxing thermal pool.

With thousands of Little Red Foxes flying above it is like a scene from The Birds or Jurassic Park...but I still took a dip in the pool...but oh the smell of bat crap!

After checking into the All Seasons in Katherine it was time to hit the pool before dinner where the flies drove us indoors to play party games all night long!!!