Mataranka - Fast Facts

Mataranka (including the Never-Never)
Small township and a large resort near the Stuart Highway in the famous 'never-never'.
Mataranka is located on the Stuart Highway 1059 km north of Alice Springs, 423 km south of Darwin and 107 km south of Katherine. It was once unkindly described by the writer Sumner Locke Elliott as 'this lonely strip of barren and seemingly endless sandy waste of ant-hills and stunted trees - thick, hot red sand in the winter time and a sea of mud during the dreaded 'Wet".

It is fair to wonder whether Elliott was aware of the area's one great attraction when he wrote so disparagingly of the town. 10 km to the east of the town, which, in fairness, is nothing more than a couple of roadhouses and a pub on the Stuart Highway, there is a small, 4 hectare park with a superb thermal pool and stands of cabbage tree palms and paperbarks. Owned and operated as the Mataranka Homestead Tourist Resort this is a popular stopover and picnic spot for visitors to the area.

Perhaps even more importantly (and again Elliott's description ignores this literary interest) the town was near the site of Elsey Station, the subject of Jeannie Gunn's enormously popular autobiographical novel We of the Never-Never.