Day 206 – 30/6/14 – Winton – Longreach QLD

Brrrrr...well if we thought the previous few night had been cold then we were sorely mistaken, and apparently they are going to get colder of the next few days! Around 6 am I turned our bush camping heater on, our biggest sauce pan filled with water on the stove, and by 7 the boys were both in our bed under the doona as we snuggled like little piggies trying to conserve heat! It was a late breakfast due to the fact that none of us wanted to get out from under the doona!

After driving around town a few times getting a few supplies we headed the 15kms out to the “Australia Age of Dinosaurs” museum.  Similar to what happened in Richmond a local grazier, Peter, stumbled across a few dinosaur bones in his paddock. After some initial help from the QLD museum  Peter decided this was a good opportunity and started to do the digs himself with the assistance of some other locals and volunteers. In the end they managed to pull out a remnants of three massive dinosaurs. Again when other local graziers came to  learn what a dinosaur fossil looks like many were able to go back to their properties and bring back samples.

They were going from strength to strength and on one dig they pulled out two that are nicknames “Banjo” and “Matilda” with Banjo being the first of his kind found in the world. They took a big risk and set up a centre where people could come and participate in the digs and the preparation of the fossils turning it into a working museum that is also a tourist attraction! It has grown significantly over the past 10 years  to the point where they now have a laboratory building and a display building with another monster complex just starting to be constructed.

All of the fossils waiting to be prepared...just a few years worth of work.

Volunteers doing the prepping...anybody over 12 can do it!

A sheep verterbrae up against Matilda's. Its hard to see but the similarity of their shape was uncanny.

We visited both sites and had a great time. Visiting the lab was really cool as they showed you how they find the fossils, from beginning to end, and then how they take the surrounding rock of them. We then went to the display where we sat through an awesome presentation about Banjo and Matilda that went from Jurrasic Park like animation  through to the finer detail on the actual bones that were laid out in front of us, and these weren’t models they were the real deal!

Banjo's bits n pieces

Matilda's left overs

Part of the animation that gave us an idea of what it was like here a lazy 100 million years ago and the theory as to why they both ended up in the same pit together.

Content with our paleontological experience we packed up and left the dinosaur trail behind us, heading south to Longreach. We pulled into the riverside park just north of town and settled into the serene landscape that surrounded us...100 caravans all parked on top of each other, but hey...if its free I’ll take it!

Ahhh the serenity!

The boys mucked around while I managed to pull a copy of last Saturdays Townsville Bulletin from the bin and immersed myself in it. I tried to remember the last time I had read a newspaper, but could only say it was around Perth, or something like that. As soon as the sun got close to the horizon we all climbed in the van and I was happy to be cooking inside. Oh how things have changed from a month ago when eating inside the van was to warm! It is supposed to be getting down to 3 or 4 in the morning so we all rugged up and prepared ourselves like we were heading into an arctic winter!

Day 205 – 29/6/14 – Prairie – Winton QLD

Dusty, very very dusty.....and then there was the landscape around us which compared to the way I felt looked like a lush green field!

We dragged ourselves out of bed at 9 somethingish and cooked up a nice greasy breakfast in the hope of feeling a touch better. The boys scoffed their tucker and headed for the pub! A few minutes later I saw them happily playing in the tree house with the girls Bluey had been alluding to in yesterdays post!

We packed up ever so slowly, in what felt like sub zero temperatures, and by 10:30ish we were ready to go. The only thing left to do was to settle the bill. In his wisdom Tom, the publican, had offered us the opportunity to run a tab. I tried to finalise it before we left on Friday night and last night I wasn’t fit to do most things so he got the calculator out and went to work. While I won’t go into details I am pretty sure between Bluey and us we just put at least one of his daughters through Uni!

We said goodbye to Bluey and were ready to go when Tom arrived in his car and offered to take the boys over to their horse paddock to see the horse. No problem. 10 minutes later the boys arrived, both on the same horse, bareback..well kind of, beign led by the girls. It made for a pretty cute photo.  After a few laps of the park we were finally on the road, sad to leave such a great place but my liver and wallet were jumping for joy!

We rolled through to Hughenden and then turned south arriving in Winton mid afternoon. We stopped at the singing fence where the “Perrier Family” showed their finesse as a musical outfit that would surely rival any kindergarten concert. What is a singing fence I hear you ask? While I am still not 100% sure it appears to be an attempt to build an extremely oversized guitar using a fence as strings and the roof or a small shed as the wooden part of the guitar....the drum kits was much more fun!

We then rolled into town to see the “Matilda  Centre” which is a museum of sorts, a tribute to the poem ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and its writer. I know I have mentioned prices a couple of times recently but I though this one was over the top, expecially after my wallet had just been drained in Prairie. I am not sure how they determined their pricing but I thought $52 for a family for something that will take you 1 ½ hrs was a touch steep! I think my view was justified as two other mobs walked out once they learnt the price while we were there.

All of the public bins in the towns on the Dinosaur trail have these cool covers 

Instead we wondered the streets looking at some of the street art around finishing at the North Gregory Hotel where it is believed Waltzing Matilda was performed in front of an audience for the first time. 

The original pub was burnt down but we were satisfied with the "This is the spot" sign

Just behind the pub is the hose of a junk collector who has turned his piles of other people’s garbage into a fence come piece of art. The fence was filled with almost everything you can imagine from whole motorbikes to porcelain plates and what was more amazing to see was the number of people who were there looking at it!

Arno's Wall
Maybe an idea for all of Gerry's junk McEwan streeters?

We headed south of town to the free camp area where we set up and had a quite afternoon watching a bit of footy and sitting around the camp fire in the cool night air. The evenings are now to cool to sit outside and once the boys have been put to bed we lie on the bed reading and doing the blog! It wasn’t long before the eyelids were feeling veeery heavy and an early night was had by all!

Day 204 - 29/6/14 - Prairie QLD

A slow start to the day: a leisurely breakfast, showers and don glad rags to hit the race track.

Couldn’t help but hear Sambo explaining to Mum that his feet would just get dirty again …. Luke made wraps for lunch after chocolate cake for morning tea – seems you can eat well on the road.

Buffy, the pub mascot.

Hughenden race track is undergoing refurbishment so their yearly races are being held at the Prairie track.  This is your typical country track consisting of a few open corrugated iron sheds and a stewards’ tower alongside a dusty dirt track.  The day is perfect, clear blue skies in the mid-twenties.  A friendly crowd of locals and a few grey nomads join us for five races, and the event is well run by the brigade of moleskin-wearing volunteers straight from one of Banjo’s poems. 

Tickets are required for alcoholic refreshments and they get better value when you buy in bulk. I hand over a fifty and am asked how many tickets I would like? ‘A hundred’ I quickly replied, causing some consternation amongst the staff until they got the joke – I got 23 tickets, but with beers $4 a can there was no arguing the value.

Although we didn’t eat, the scent of steak and burgers being BBQ’d wafted enticingly throughout the shaded seating areas.  Under a nearby tree some of the kids from the pub last night were watching events, and the boys spent some of the day with them, in between looking at the horses in the ring and, of course, watching the races.

The dry track seemed a little tricky underfoot on the last bend before the 200m straight to the finish and a number of the runners struggled or ran wide.  That said there were no falls and if memory serves only one favourite came in – good for me as the tried and true method of picking an outsider with a nice name paid off!  We could wander over and stand at the fence opposite the mirror to watch each race, Sam sat up on the fence and only the jockeys had a better view. 

After the races we sneak back to the pub via the back road and settle in for a few cold ones.  Another tasty dinner on the old shearers’ mess table in the homey dining room went down very well, and Jack continued to put in the groundwork on the publican’s daughters.  Earlier than perhaps expected I slink away to my lovely room and warm bed: very tired, a little drunk, and very happy.

…. Oh, Sam was right about his feet.

Day 203 – 27/6/14 – Richmond – Prarie QLD

Today is the last day of school, if the boys were at school, so we were determined to get all town we of their school work finished so we didn’t have to think about it for the our last week on the road. With that out of the way, yeeeee haaa, we packed up and headed for Hughenden. Before we left town we went back to the butchers where we had bought last nights shanks. They were only $5.99/kg and they were delicious so we bought his last 17!

Our plan was to stop quickly in Hughenden and then drive the 40km to a small town, Prarie, where we would meet a great friend of ours ‘Blue’ who was driving out from Townsville, stay the night there and then come back and see Hughenden on Saturday. However as soon as we found out the races were on in Prarie on Saturday we changed plans and decided to stay in Prarie both nights! The entry to the Flinders Discovery Centre was part of our Dinosaur Trail pass we bought yesterday so we spent an hour wondering around it. 

Similar to Kronosaurus Corner it was filled with fossils that had mostly been discovered by local graziers going about their days work. When they were unearthing the Muttaburrsaurus, that closely resembles a T Rex, one of the kids had to go home to get its bottom jaw that they using as a door stop in the family home!

They know how to build windmills in this part of the world!

We rolled onto Prarie where we set up at the ‘free’ camp behind the pub. I say ‘free’ as it is that as long as you have a drink at the pub. Based on those rates I think I might be able to retire there! We weren’t there long when Bluey arrived and the festivities began! 

As he lives in Townsville I only see Blue once every six months when I drive through for work but the boys and De hadn’t seen him for nearly 2 years so they were even more excited!

Sitting on the dentists chair

Bluey caught the interest of a few of the local ladies!

But these girls were no dummies....

 We had some nibbles and beers at the van before we headed into the pub. It is a great old county pub. The walls are decorated with old Akubras and bits of farming gear from yesteryear. Tom and Andrea who own the pub have three daughters and the boys had a great time tearing around the pub with them. We had dinner, but unlike most places where you all sit at seperate tables they had a dining room with a massive old table beautifully set where everybody ate together at the same time.  It was really cool!

The remainder of the night was spent holding up the bar and getting to know the locals as they came in for some Friday night refreshment! Around 11:30 we called it stumps and retired after a great night!

Postscript: Tomorrow Bluey will be our guest blogger and for Tony’s sake I hope his spelling and grammar is better than mine! Enjoy!

Day 202 – 26/6/14 – Richmond QLD

De’s Birthday – Hip Hip Hooooray!

I was again woken at some silly hour shivering and shaking, but without the assistance of yesterdays rooster, so the heater was cranked up. The boys were told 7am at the absolute earliest but around 6:30 they were down on Jack’s bunk planning something, so I went to investigate finding same tearing pages into confetti to shower De in. I quickly put a stop to that and left them to whatever their other plans were. At 7 on the dot they were up trying to plug Jack’s Ipod into the vans stereo system and even with my assistance we couldn’t get it to work. They had found a Happy Birthday song on You tube, complete with karoke style words, and played it for De on the Ipod.

Next was the dispensing of presents. While we walked around Lawn Hill national park a few weeks ago we had come up with a list of goodies. Usually you get ‘things’ but instead De got home made vouchers as not only was it almost impossible to find a pair of running shoes in Burketown, Normanton, Karumba, Cloncurry or Julia Creek but I didn’t like the chance of us returning them if they were the wrong size or colour! Part of the plan was also for De to have a pedicure in the afternoon, as a surprise, but the only problem was there isn’t even a hair dresser in Richmond let a lone a beauty salon! I did however, after half a dozen shops coving a thousand kilometres eventually find a new set of winter PJs that we could give to her today, and they were even gift wrapped which is a novelty in our household!

What every mother wants for her birthday....to be dog piled!

The boys and I made French Toast with bacon and maple syrup sprinkled with icing sugar for the birthday girl and then headed for Kronosaurus Korner (KK). KK is an amazing ‘dinosaur’ centre that the locals have set up and run. In the late 1970’s they discovered an almost complete Kronosaurus on one of the local properties. A boffin from Havard Uni in the USA came over, dug him up and took him back with him where he still is today. Fast forward thirty years and a local grazier was out mustering cattle and he noticed a funny looking rock/thing sticking out from the side of a creek bank, he kicked it but it didn’t budge so he dug around it pulling a bit out. Even at his first glance he could tell it was something a bit unique so he sent it off to the QLD museum for review. He had sent them a nose and a week later he had a pile of boffins crawling over the creek bed digging up the rest of the most complete Kronosaurus fossil ever discovered! 

Amazingly enough a week later he also managed to find one of the best examples of a Minmisaur ever found, and it took the paelentologist only a day to extract the whole fossil!!

We spent a good three hours looking at the exhibits in the centre enjoying every word of the self guided audio tour. Since these finds many locals have learnt a lot about paleontology and many of them have found significant fossils in their day to day life on their properties.

It was lunch time so we sent De on her way while we went to the bakery to get lunch. When we were in SA we had pie floaters and De loved them so I went about recreating them. I had looked up a few recipes on the internet for the mushy peas, with most of them coming from split peas that had been soaked overnight, which was going to pretty hard to do and keep a secret. When I dropped into the bakery yesterday to order 4 pies I asked them about how they do their mushy peas and after finding out what I was up to Deb, the super nice lady, agreed to do up a big batch of mushy peas for me!!! So we grabbed our supplies and after heating up the peas and constructing the floaters we presented them to the very surprised birthday girl. They weren't nearly as good as the SA ones but I am sure with a few more practice runs they will get better!

After a little snooze the boys and I put the lamb shanks on the webber, grabbed our paleontology equipment and headed the to the ‘dig site’ 12 kilometres north of town leaving De to have some quite time. KK had supplied us with a sheet which would help us identify the fossils when we found them, the only problem was it didn’t tell us how to find them. So there we were standing in the middle of an old disused quarry hoping to find a few 100 million year old things. My hope was that we would find someone there who knew what they were doing, but we were all alone. Plan B was to find where other people had been digging and look there. For 20 minutes we wondered around in circles in the scrub and having found no evidence of any other digs I was starting to wonder if somebody was having a lend of me. We got the shovel out and made a couple 5cm deep holes and surprisingly enough we didn’t find anything! We wondered on and eventually found an area where others had been so we started digging looking at the rocks as we dug them up.   It was pretty frustrating to say the least as the boys were really keen to find a fossil but I nothing to help them. Eventually Jack managed to find a rock that had something that resembled fossils! YEAH!! I wasn’t positive but was pretty sure we were close enough to satisfy them!

We dug for a while and decided it might be worth heading to the other dig site to see if anybody was there. When we arrived there was 5 or 6 cars with a group of people crowded around a real palaeontologist, who we had seen a KK in the morning. I quickly realised that all the people were on a paid dig so we kept our distance to see what they were doing and hopefully copy them. Gary, the palaeontologist then invited the boys over to break apart some of the ‘fish mash’ he was digging up. To find the fossils he was using a ‘wrecking bar’ to chisel up a layer of rock and then turning it over and 9/10 times there was a fossil of some kind exposed. From fish scales, jaws and teeth to dinosaur poo and the cartilage part of dinosaur squid. It was pretty cool! Often layers of the rocks were quite soft, the fish mash, and could be broken up in your fingers so Gary would hand us a chunk and we would crumble it up to see what we could find, and find we did! It is pretty cool to be able to find the tooth of a shark that fell out 100 million years ago!

Our awesome haul for the day!

Happy with our haul we headed back to camp to show De. We had the shanks that had been slow cooking for 4 hours with some creamy mash and a couple of nice wines for dinner followed up with a birthday cake. Sam had wanted to put 42 candles on the cake but I managed to sway him by getting a fancy musical candle that played happy birthday. When De was cutting the cake Sambo pushed De’s hand down ensuring it hit the plate so she had to give me a kiss! Thanks Sambo!!!

It was toooo cold to sit outside so when we put the boys to bed we lay on the bed reading and sipping our wines to finish off what had been a great day!