Winton, Hughenden and Richmond are all in the heart of dinosaur and fossil country and the roads between them are known as The Dinosaur Trail. From Winton we've driven 212km to Hughenden which is on the Flinders Highway, the main road between Townsville on the coast and Mount Isa in the west. We've booked into the Hughenden Allen Terry Caravan Park which has shady, grassy sites and is next door to the swimming pool.
As with many small towns, there's plenty to see here and our first day is spent exploring the town. There are a lot of sculptures in the town, many with a prehistoric theme. We saw the Ammonite Sculpture made from windmill parts, Leanneosaur, a life sized flying metal sculpture of a Queensland Pterosaur, 3 sculptures of metal pterosaurs, Darby the Dinosaur, a large wall sculpture and sculptures of metal fish made from washers and scrap metal. In the centre of town is the Federation Rotunda which has 20ft windmills dated 1912 and 1916, at each end. Nearby is a life sized replica of "Mutt", the Muttaburrasaurus.
The main tourist attraction in Hughenden is the Flinders Discovery Centre which has a display of fossils from the local area and around the world. The centrepiece is "Hughie", a life sized skeletal replica of a Muttaburrasaurus. There's also a light and sound show illustrating the formation of the nearby Porcupine Gorge.
Day 2 and we're in the car for the 110km drive to Richmond to visit Kronosaurus Korner. This is a fantastic museum and is well worth a visit. Outside the museum is a lifesized replica of a Kronosausus, which was a formidable sea predator. We also saw Minmi, a small herbivorous dinosaur.
The informative audio tour provided explanations of when and where the fossils were discovered and how they were prepared for exhibition. Many of the fossils are displayed in sand and some have been left in the sand/rock matrix as they were found. We were able to see the fossil preparation area although no work was going on while we were there. Some of the fossils on display are the most complete in the world.
After our visit to Kronosaurus Korner we went fossil hunting at one of the fossil hunting sites just out of town. It only took s few minutes for us to find some fossils in the rocks there. Then is was back to Hughenden and a welcome swim to cool down.
Day 3 in Hughenden and it's raining. A good thing we did our washing last night. We woke up at about 4.30am to a spectacular sunrise with a bright orange sky. A few hours later and we have steady rain which has persisted through the day. After lunch the rain eased off and we decided to drive to nearby Porcupine Gorge. This is a popular camping and picnic spot about 65kms from Hughenden on the road to Cairns. The Gorge is known as "Australia's Little Grand Canyon" and has been carved over the millennia by Porcupine Creek revealing layers of basalt and coloured sandstones. The beautiful colours can be seen in the 120m high cliffs of the Gorge.
Tomorrow we're off to Charters Towers en route to Townsville.
Winton is in the heart of dinosaur country. We are constantly amazed by how much there is to see in and around the small country towns we are visiting on our travels and Winton is no exception. The Information Centres usually have really good pamphlets of things to see and do. Here we picked up information on some self guided drives which we'll do.
"Banjo" Patterson wrote Waltzing Matilda in this area and there's a statue to him outside the Waltzing Matilda Centre, which houses a good museum and the Visitor Information Centre. We spent a couple of hours there looking at the exhibits about Waltzing Matilda, the Art Gallery, seeing some of the history of the area and looking at the many exhibits and memorabilia. There was a good presentation on the story behind the song and its history and also a short video about the region. We spent our first day looking at the attractions in the town.
We walked through the Corfield & Fitzmaurice General Store which is a historic building. The inside is just as it would have been in it's heyday as the town's general store. These days they sell mainly locally produced arts and crafts and also have a museum with fossils, dinosaur bones and a display of the types of kitchen items the store would have sold many years ago.
There's quite a bit of street art, with many sculptures in the landscaped median strip of the main street. We saw the Open Air Movie Theatre, which is still in use and which has the World's Largest Deck Chair. Even the garbage bins have a dinosaur theme.
300 million years ago Winton was in the Great Inland Sea and 100 million years ago dinosaurs roamed the swampy forests of this area. There are several drives into "dinosaur country". We took the day trip to Lark Quarry, about 100km into the bush. The scenery was amazing and we travelled into jump-up country. These features have a very hard rock top, usual a very hard rock like ironstone, sitting on top of the softer sandstone or mudstone. This structure makes the jump-ups fragile and susceptible to erosion and had resulted in their distinctive shape.
Lark Quarry is the location of the world's only known dinosaur stampede and we went to see the footprints which have been preserved in what would have been the muddy billabong foreshores. There are thousands of footprints, made by possibly hundreds of dinosaurs ranging in size from small carnivorous chicken, to vegetarian emu to a large predatory tyrannosaur.
Speculation is that the small and medium sized animals were feeding and drinking at the billabong when the large predator arrived and caused the stampede. The footprints are very well preserved in the fully self sustained building and it's easy to imagine the chaos that would have been occurring millions of years ago.
The drive back to Winton was through mitchell grass plains. There was a bushfire in the area, the black smoke is caused by burning spinnifex which has a waxy coating to preserve moisture in the plant.
The following day we visited the Australian Age of Dinosaurs, about 20 km out of Winton. This is divided into 2 sections with 30 minute tours of each. Near the entrance is a replica of "Banjo", possibly the predator which caused the stampede at Lark Quarry. He stands about 4m high but has formidable claws and would have run at a sustainable speed around 30kph. At the Museum we saw a video which took us from 500 million years ago through the ages to 100 million years ago when dinosaurs were prevalent in the area.
Our guide explained some of the biomechanics of the dinosaurs and we saw some of the bones of "Matilda" one of the largest dinosaurs found in Australia at 20m high - that's REALLY BIG!!
Then we drove over to the Laboratory where the real work is done. Bones were originally discovered accidentally by farmers, often when mustering. These days organised digs are arranged in the cooler months. The fossilised bones with surrounding rock and earth are removed from the dig site after being wrapped in foil and hessian and plaster cast and are stored in the laboratory until needed. As well as academics and qualified palaeontologists, volunteers can pay to spend time working on the fossils and on digs which are held in the cooler months. It would be quite a thrill to see a dinosaur bone emerging from its encasing rock. Maybe this is something we should keep on our list.
On our return we took the River Red Gum drive through the Bradenberg National Park. More spectacular scenery at Engine Hole, a popular picnic and swimming spot; and Skull Hole, the site of a massacre of aboriginals in the 1800s. We stopped off for a walk around the old homestead buildings where the ranger station is located. We passed several large termite mounds and saw plenty of wedge tailed eagles. Unfortunately we weren't quick enough with the camera to get photos - we'll get some eventually as there are plenty of eagles in this countryside.
Our time at Oma Waterholes came to an end and we hit the road for the 125km drive to Longreach.
We had driven to Longreach a few days earlier on Friday, just to check it out and had the misfortune to have a tyre blow out, probably caused by a kangaroo bone on the road. Nothing happens quickly in the bush and a week later we are still waiting for our replacement tyre. It was expected last Monday but there were none in Queensland so was coming from Sydney and expected mid-week. Now we find that that tyre was re-routed to someone else and we have had to accept a different tyre which will arrive on Monday, 10 days after our original order, just so we can get back on the road with a spare tyre. The Dunlop tyre we want will take another 10 days or so to arrive and we can't wait that long. We'll get another tyre when we have more time in Townsville. Thanks Dunlop, you've just cost us $400 extra!!
Enough of the griping and back to our adventure.
Longreach, pop. about 4500, is a great place. We can't believe the number of people who only stay here for a couple of days because there's so much to see. We are doing it leisurely over 10 days. We had planned to stay a week and booked into the Longreach Tourist Park, with a powered site so we can use the air-con in the caravan. A good move since it's been over 40C every day.
We visited the Longreach School of Distance Education (LSODE or School of the Air) and did a tour where we saw some the teaching studios, classrooms, the playgrounds and examples of schoolwork by students. We also saw The Quarters, where students and families stay when they come to Longreach for classwork and activities. LSODE has about 170 students ranging from Prep (Kindy) to Year 10.
It's just like any other state school except that the students are usually at remote locations and they communicate by computer, radio and phone. There were no classes running, they finished last week, so we couldn't see live lessons. We did see a video lesson where there was a camera with the teacher and another camera at a homestead. It was very interesting to see the Year 3 lesson in progress. There are children all over Longreach at the moment because the LSODE has its Presentation Night tonight. At only $8 each it was good value for the 1 1/2 hours we were there.
Then it was off to the Stockman's Hall of Fame, another key attraction here. This was also very interesting and the $20 each we paid for entry to the museum gave us a 2 day pass. At the entry to the Stockmans Hall of Fame is a large bronze statue titled "The Ringer" which really says it all about this place. The Museum has a great range of exhibits about life in the Outback. There are a lot of audio and video presentations. We returned the next day to see the short film which was worth seeing. We spent a couple of hours in the museum and also visited the Art Gallery where we spent time chatting to David, the curator.
The next day we visited the other main attraction on our list, the Qantas Founders Museum. We had booked to do the Jet Tour of a 747 and 707 which are on display. The $45 each we paid for the Jet Tour and 2 day museum pass was good value. The 1 1/2 hour tour of the jets certainly had us "up close and personal" with these huge planes. Because we were in a small group (a benefit of travelling at this time of year) we were able to go into the 747 cockpit and sit in the driving seats.
Our tour of the 707 was an eye-opener. This plane was the first 707 delivered to Qantas and it was restored by volunteers a few years ago. It was kitted out as the private jet to an oil sheik. It was interesting to see how the rich travel with wood panelling, solid gold tapware, dining tables, lounge chairs and full sized beds - no cattle-class here.
After our tour we spent a couple of hours in the Founders Museum. This museum is about the people who conceived and worked towards getting Q.A.N.T.A.S. (a precursor to Qantas) into the air and keeping it there. There were a lot of videos and a good film about the discovery and restoration of the 707. We had a good value lunch at the cafe.
The next day we went back to visit the Original Q.A.N.T.A.S. Hangar which was opened in 1922. Inside the hangar are some replica planes and dioramas of the activities which would have been going on in the 1920s and 1930s. We also saw the early "airport shuttle" used in Longreach.
Longreach has a lovely paved Botanical Walk through the trees and Robert has been riding his bicycle there most mornings. The streets and gardens have plenty of colour as the rain trees and poincianas are in full bloom. It's a great place to spend a week, especially as we are able to have a cooling swim in the pool each afternoon.
As with many small towns, there's plenty to see here and our first day is spent exploring the town. There are a lot of sculptures in the town, many with a prehistoric theme. We saw the Ammonite Sculpture made from windmill parts, Leanneosaur, a life sized flying metal sculpture of a Queensland Pterosaur, 3 sculptures of metal pterosaurs, Darby the Dinosaur, a large wall sculpture and sculptures of metal fish made from washers and scrap metal. In the centre of town is the Federation Rotunda which has 20ft windmills dated 1912 and 1916, at each end. Nearby is a life sized replica of "Mutt", the Muttaburrasaurus.
Day 2 and we're in the car for the 110km drive to Richmond to visit Kronosaurus Korner. This is a fantastic museum and is well worth a visit. Outside the museum is a lifesized replica of a Kronosausus, which was a formidable sea predator. We also saw Minmi, a small herbivorous dinosaur.
The informative audio tour provided explanations of when and where the fossils were discovered and how they were prepared for exhibition. Many of the fossils are displayed in sand and some have been left in the sand/rock matrix as they were found. We were able to see the fossil preparation area although no work was going on while we were there. Some of the fossils on display are the most complete in the world. 
Day 3 in Hughenden and it's raining. A good thing we did our washing last night. We woke up at about 4.30am to a spectacular sunrise with a bright orange sky. A few hours later and we have steady rain which has persisted through the day. After lunch the rain eased off and we decided to drive to nearby Porcupine Gorge. This is a popular camping and picnic spot about 65kms from Hughenden on the road to Cairns. The Gorge is known as "Australia's Little Grand Canyon" and has been carved over the millennia by Porcupine Creek revealing layers of basalt and coloured sandstones. The beautiful colours can be seen in the 120m high cliffs of the Gorge.
