Turtle Thursday

The day starts off with a Chance meeting with Charlie the buffalo from the Crocodile Dundee film......... He is deceased but stuffed in the Adelaide River pub where we enter for a coffee and information. You have to hand it to the locals here, they give it to you straight, "Don't bother going there, a waste of time" and so we head off for Mataranka.
It's only just down the road in accordance with Australian standards. Three and a half hours later we arrive after a brief stop en-route for coffee. It may have chucked it down yesterday with us for an hour but this place must have taken the brunt of it. Trees are down, water along side of the roads, dead palm fronds all over the place having been pushed by flood water but everything looks cleaner, crisper and fresher. So we pull into the car park at Mataranka Thermal springs and the couple we have met twice during our travels have already beaten us there....... Lunch is followed by a dip in the spring which is chucking out water that has not seen daylight in the last couple of thousand years.....
Just me and a Aborigine lady in the pool, she actually talks to me and points out a Kangaroo with a joey in its pouch grazing on the riverbank, whilst someone you all know is standing on the other river bank, getting all het up because her camera has just died......
A walk through the forest is dampened when it starts to rain again so off to Bitter Springs. Rain or no rain, leeches or no leeches, I'm going in, race back to van, collect gear and Splash, absolutely stunning, bluish crystal clear water, green plants, algae, leaves, white roots and turtles, no fish (not enough oxygen in the water) but turtles swimming about in the shadows from the tree overhangs on the embankments..... Having floated along with the current for about 100yards, I get out, leech free and collect towel from my above ground trainer, I take off the rubber bands (just in case of the Candiru fish being present) and rush back to book a camp site so as to have electricity and be able to watch my turtle video, am I excited......... Having never swam with fresh water turtles before or in anything similar to this......... You work it out!
Video not perfect but I still feel a 3 beer night coming on......
Note: The Candiru fish is the one that can swim up your wi**y.......