From Katherine to Alice
Heading down the Northern Territory’s Stuart Highway — a long, fascinating way!
AFTER Katherine, I embarked on a long trip south — nearly 1,500 km in total from Darwin — to Alice Springs. This railway map that I saw on a wall is an excellent guide to some of what’s on the way, whether you go by train, bus, or car.
Mataranka
Not long after setting out, I pulled into Mataranka, which is really just a dot on the map but made famous by a hugely popular 1908 novel called We of the Never-Never, by Jeannie Gunn, “Mrs Aeanas Gunn” as she styled herself by the formal and now extinct custom of using her husband’s first name as well as his last. Jeannie lived with Aenas on nearby Elsey Station, of which he was the boss, throughout nearly the whole of 1902 and the first months of 1903.
They lived there until Mr Gunn sadly died of a tropical disease in March 1903 — another factor that helps to explain the belated colonisation of the Top End, I…
