The Homestead Pools
They reminded me of roman baths in Europe.
To get to them, you need to traverse through the homestead grounds and bar. They advertise with little signs along the way about suggestions for your money. The waters were, on the day we visited, frequented by retired folk and a young family with two talkative splashing children.
The water is undoubtable the turquoise you can see in the pictures. Albert said, ‘But they are free! They don’t have to be.’ And they are like a little bit of luxury off the dusty highways. I thought it was a pretty area, but we liked the ‘authenticity’ of the Bitter springs better.
Bitter Springs
There was a rather dry humour in the plaques beside the pool. The tempting reading material discusses why there was the ‘rotten egg gas’ in the air, and uses tantalising words such as ‘bacteria’, ‘green slime’, ‘decomposition’, ‘low oxygen’, ‘swamp’ and ‘stinking rotten mats’ of vegetation to lure swimmers. The pictures showed blowflies with their young ( larvae). The air did smell ‘rotten’, but not enough to discourage the boys.
The light was clear, sharp and perfect to display the blue-green water. It actually a tropical spring running through limestone. The pools are the average temperature (33 degrees) ground water for the area, but are advertised as ‘thermal’. The decomposed minerals of limestone is what gives the water its spectacular colour and bitter taste.
Albert and Jett swam. Its not refreshing like the waterholes up north, and Albert complained of feeling slightly suffocated after ten minutes. The pictures were worth it.
I had my pyramid and felt uncomfortable putting myself into obviously gorgeous waters. The only people we met were Germans. A teenage group of metal hippies and two girls travelling alone. Otherwise the place was deserted.
