SYDNEY BROOME TRIP 2006

Saturday 6 May to Friday 12 May
Winton to Mount Isa
Blog 2

Winton on the Western River is one of the 3 towns in dinosaur country so after unhitching the van we headed to Lark Quarry 110km out of town on dirt road.

The Lark Quarry is a fantastic site of fossilized dinosaur footprints that were formed 95 millions ago. There are footprints of 4 different types of dinosaurs. The story around the footprints is that the smaller plant eating dinosaurs were trapped between the water and the large meat eating dinosaur. They ran away from the water and tried to escape the predator. The mud was just of the right consistency for the prints to be maintained and then get fill with sand before the next layer of mud covered them. Just perfect conditions.

The North Gregory Hotel in Winton is the site where Banjo Paterson first read Waltzing Matilda. The main street of town has sculptures of Banjo Paterson, a Jolly Swagman and a billabong with pelicans around it. The Waltzing Matilda Centre has fantastic displays all about Waltzing Matilda and Banjo Paterson with an outdoor section on the history of the town. The original name of Winton was in fact Pelican Waterhole. Winton is definitely a small country town beautiful birds and the sweet smell of the bush but even the bakery is closed on Sundays!! The Corfield and Fitzmaurice Store which was a general store but now houses the fossilized bone of “Elliot”, the largest dinosaur found so far in Australia.

We drove along the River Gum Route which is a 60km round trip into Bladensburg National Park. There were rivers, the Western & Mistake Creek, a memorial to the shearers from the shearers strike, some great claypans, a beautiful waterhole with White Gums along the banks, a little Jump Up and a beautiful area called the Skull Hole.On our way to Hughendale, on the Fitzroy River, we had a flat tyre on the caravan so replacing that tyre was our first priority.
Once that was organized we head off to Porcupine Gorge in the Porcupine Gorge National Park. This is advertised as the little Grand Canyon of Australia. The views were certainly worth the trip and then we walked 1.2km down to the bottom of the gorge and then of course back up again.

Our last stop in Hughendale was the Flinders Discovery Centre with its “replica” of the Muttaburrasaurus Dinosaur and fossil and gem collection. The bones of the Dinosaur were spectacular.

Richmond, which is also on the Flinders River, is the last of the 3 dinosaur fossil towns and it was different again from Winton and Hughenden. The museum/display/centre in Richmond focuses on the abundant marine fossils in the area. It is a working museum with associations with paleontologists and other academics that are currently working on fossils existing in the centre and those that are still being excavated.

We drove through Cloncurry on our way to Mt Isa and the countryside was much rockier with large rock outcrops rather than the grassy plains that we have been driving through over the past few days.

Mt Isa, which is situated on the Leichhardt River, is a real man’s mining town with lots of utes. We went to the Hard Times underground mine tour which was fantastic. It let us experience the equipment and conditions of the miners. It was great. The city’s slogan says, “You’re not a real Aussie ‘till you’ve been to the Isa”.