Mataranka - Places to See

Elsey Cemetery and National Reserve
A sign on the Stuart Highway 10 km south of the town points to the Elsey Cemetery and National Reserve which is located 5 km to the east.

The cemetery contains the remains of Aeneas James Gunn 'The Maluka' who died on 16 March 1902 of malarial dysentery only 13 months after the couple had moved to the area. The grave of Aeneas is located next to a memorial to Jeannie which reads 'In loving Memory of the 'Little Missus". She died on 9 June 1961 having outlived her husband by nearly half a century.

The remains of some of the other characters mentioned in We of the Never-Never were relocated to the Elsey Cemetery during World War 11 when the Northern Territory force carried out work designed to develop the cemetery as a significant part of Australia's cultural heritage.

In fairness to Elliott even Mrs. Gunn was in awe of the loneliness of the area. In We of the Never-Never she described Elsey Station as 'this tiny homestead of a million and a quarter acres, with the Katherine settlement a hundred miles to the north of it, one neighbour ninety miles to the east, another, a hundred and five to the south, and others about two hundred to the west.'

Mataranka Homestead Tourist Resort
The number of travellers (originally they had read the book and now they have seen the film) wanting to discover Jeannie Gunn's 'never-never' continues to increase. Mataranka Homestead Tourist Resort has cleverly exploited the lack of historical remnants by purchasing and rebuilding the replica of Elsey Homestead which was used in the 1982 film We of the Never-Never.

The whole notion of the 'never-never' was that it was somewhere which was impossibly distant. The most extreme area of the outback. A term which was synonymous with hardship and loneliness.

The image of the 'never-never' is that evoked by Henry Lawson in his poem 'The Never-Never Land' when he writes

Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
Mounts Dreadful and Despair -
'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there.