The tourist season just ended in Mataranka, Northern Territories, and with the departing camper vans a piece of its soul left too. In the beginning of October, during the hottest days of the dry season, outside-life during the day is virtually impossible. The bird voices, still so divers and plentiful in the cool mornings, vanish; their owners hiding from the blazing sun in the sparse shady areas of the bush. The thumping of retreating wallaby feet gets scarce as they take a rest from the hot ground, painful to walk on. Only the wind keeps moving, blowing the odd breeze of fresh air into the sweating faces of dozing humans sitting on wood-panelled porches in armchairs older than themselves, postponing work towards the darker hours in spite of their diurnal nature. Dried out and cracked up pastures, hundred-meter-wide gullies, once flowing rivers, cast doubt that this area is anything but inhospitable. Still, water is plenty. Once again, the Artesian Basin saves the day. The underground water reservoir feeding most of Australians agricultural efforts also provides enough liquid resources to keep some of the local rivers alive until the wet arrives. Just about two kilometres from the town’s centre, Bitter Springs is one of many clear-water outlets, rich in nutrients, that made this tiny place so famous. And the fact that a very curious chain of events makes these water pools, widely appreciated by humans, so uninteresting to the local reptiles. How lucky indeed. Even though freshwater crocodiles are apparently not as violent as their saltwater cousins. It’s enough to attract the occasional off-season tourist, who, after spending hours on the road without meeting a single soul, enters a ghost-like town, deserted by everyone except a minimum number of people to keep the pub and the roadhouse running. A town, at the brink of death, who only shivers a little once the sun sets in a fiery red over the bright-green eucalyptus canopy. When body temperatures drop to non-threatening levels, the locals awake and feeling particularly hungry after this hot day, postpone work to the next day, and flood the streets, instead, in search of nourishment. How the life here has changed since the first settlement was established. Home to the author of the Australian-wide famous book ‘We of the Never-Never’, more than a hundred years ago, the original Elsey station harboured white settlers and first Nation’s people alike, to take care of a large number of cattle. The book describes how it took them four days on horseback just to reach this remote outpost. ‘But we who have lived in it, and loved it, and left it, know that our hearts can Never-Never rest away from it.’ (Gunn, Prelude).