Thomas Family Road Trip: Winton (15/4/12

Thursday 19 April 2012

Winton (15/4/12 – 17/4/12)

A much easier day of driving today, only 180kms from Longreach to Winton. We booked into the Matilda Caravan Park so we could plug into electricity and charge everything up.

Winton is a small, neat town, with a population of 700. Despite its size, there is a lot to do in Winton. Our main reasons for visiting Winton were to see the dinosaur attractions that Winton is well known for.

The Age of Dinosaurs Museum allowed us to visit the laboratory where technicians were working on fossils, including dinosaur bones that had been discovered in the area. Dinosaur bones were first discovered in this area in the 1970’s by a pastoralist on his property. Since then, a huge number of dinosaur bones and fossils have been discovered. We then visited the museum section where we saw the bones in their finished state. It was fascinating to watch the technicians working on the bones.

We also visited the Lark Quarry Conservation Park, 100kms south east of Winton. This is the site of dinosaur footprints during a stampede many millions of years ago. We got to see the footprints of what is unofficially named an Australian T-Rex and two smaller, chicken like dinosaurs.

The people who work in these museums are so passionate about dinosaurs and very excited to share their knowledge with visitors. There are more dinosaur sites in towns north east of Winton. We will not be visiting these as they are not on our travel route (and a fair distance to travel to), plus we have all had our dinosaur fix!

Chloe and Donna spent a couple of hours at the Waltzing Matilda Visitors Centre. A lot of this centre is based around Australia’s unofficial national anthem, Waltzing Matilda. It is believed that Banjo Patterson wrote this song in the Winton area and performed it for the first time at the North Gregory Hotel in Winton, which is still in operation today. The centre was also home to a number of local historical items.

We visited two more of Winton’s attractions – Arno’s Wall and the Musical Fence. Arno’s Wall is a quirky 70 metre concrete wall that was built by a local opal miner with numerous items built into the wall, including car parts, motorbikes, a cash register, microwave, cutlery and even the kitchen sink! Quite bizarre! Chloe didn’t think too much of it, whereas Ben thought it was “good”.

The Musical Fence is a wire fence that is built in such a way that when you touch the wire with a pipe it plays different notes. The kids were more interested in playing the other musical instruments, such as the drum kit made from old tins, saucepan lids, plates and ashtray. Very noisy.

Simon and the kids tried their luck at catching some yabbies in a nearby waterhole, unfortunately with little luck.

We are all enjoying being back in Australia’s outback. The clear skies, warm, dry weather, the isolation, the amazing night sky and the adventure of it all. We are fascinated by the size of the road trains up here – they are massive – some with 4 trailers and up to 53.5 metres long!

Next stop…Mt Isa or somewhere nearby.