Monthly Archives: May 2019

We had a bit of a drive out to Lark Quarry along some dirt track and some sealed road. Google said it was 110km and would take us 3 hrs. So we were prepared for a long day, as it was it took us just over an hour.

First of all the tour guide Bec gave a little talk then showed us video of the founders of the site and a little information about the stampede. She explained positive and negative fossils. She passed around a positive fossil of one of the dinosaurs prints, 95 million years old and here I am holding it, its mind boggling.

95 million years ago lots of little dinosaurs approximately the size of a chicken, and one a bit bigger, were drinking at a water hole when a very large carnivorous dinosaur came in for a feed. All the smaller ones scattered trying to escape and all these footprints are now immortalised in stone, over 3,300 of them. It is a very small exhibit but it really is something to be seen and I would highly recommend a trip out there.

On our way back to camp we decided to check out a couple more small places of interest in the town of Winton. But we before we did that we returned to camp for lunch and a break.

The musical fence is a wire fence that can be played as a musical fence. Locals donated all sorts of household items (junk) and Graeme Leak designed the park, starting with the fence then other “musical instruments”. It was just Michelle, Emma and I that went to look. Well, who would have thought we would have so much fun playing about with musical junk. I think every kid should have this kind of thing in their back yards, I don’t think the neighbours would agree!! We sussed out the fence and had a go at all other musical sets more than once. Emma was having a ball, mind you I reckon Michelle and I reverted back to our childhood too. Lots of laughs, lots of photos and a couple of nutty videos.

We had heard about a rock wall in town Arno’s wall it is 2 metres high and constructed with rocks, concrete and ANY household item he could gather for his wall. It even had two full motorbikes in it!!! I reckon a job well done because he did not forget the sewing machines.

That evening we decided as we were camped behind the pub we may as well go over and have dinner there. It something that just had to be done.

Tuesday May 14th we were up and ready to move on first thing in the morning, destination Winton to start our trail of the Dinosaurs. This trail starts at Winton’s, The age of the Dinosaur. We all decided it would be best to go straight to the exhibit before heading to camp. It was just Michelle, Emma, Jock and I doing this one the others were going to wait outside until we found out the tour takes 4hrs!!!! So the other two vans headed off and set up camp. When we saw the price of entry we were taken aback but in the end we all decided it was well worth it. We also had the opportunity to purchase a combined reduced priced ticket for the exhibits we would go to.

First stop was to the Labs this is where the Dinosaur bones are kept and where people work on cleaning them up for the exhibit. It really was interesting, we saw bones wrapped waiting to be cleaned, we got to watch the people working on them and even got to touch a huge thigh bone that is 95 million yrs old. We also saw a branch that had turned to stone, petrified wood.

Jock chatted to the tour guide and has decided we will return some time in the future and he will volunteer to clean up bones, we would stay on site in our van.

After the lab we went back to the main entrance to their auditorium and watched a presentation on the finding of the site and what has been found so far. Then we were talked through the display of Dinosaur bones.

Next exhibit was into Dinosaur Canyon but we had to wait for the start of our tour. So we sat out and had a drink, lovely you may think, nope, nightmare with all the flies about. We had to wear our head nets otherwise we would end up swallowing one, yeh, I swallowed one!!! YUK! For that reason I decided I would just drink my drink through the net, anything not to swallow another fly. We all came up with our own inventive ways to keep the flies out of our drinks or icecreams.

Our ride turned up by way of an elongated golf buggy. He drove us a fair way out along “The Jump Up” . They call it this because it rises sharply from the flat. We were shown some great exhibits, Dinosaurs were placed into scenes to show us how it may have looked all those years ago. We saw some Cycads that were 800 yrs old and the views from up there were just spectacular. The tour guide was very informative. We will have to come back in a few years time as they are adding to their exhibits with a new museum and an observatory. I look forward to it.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit but we were SO glad to leave the flies behind. Well those that didn’t hitch a lift in our car!!

Hey everyone sorry it has taken me a long time to actually get on here again but I suspect that is exactly how it will pan out over this trip.

Yes we picked up the caravan at last and are very pleased with it. I wont bore you with the dramas we had leading up to picking it up, with the goal posts being moved day by day, the main thing is we are actually on the road. We finally picked up the van Thursday 9th May after lunch and drove home. By the time we got home it was 5.00pm, we definitely wanted to leave the next day and catch up with the others, so after showing the van to friends and family we got into loading it. We stopped around 9.30pm and were too tired to carry on. We got up early the next morning and continued to ready the van. We did not realise just how long it would take, we thought with having everything ready to go it would be done by mid day! We finally got on the road by 4.00pm, waved off by Ruth and Ian. We decided we would just drive for as long as we could at least it would give us a head start for the next day. We got as far as Chinchilla Weir, a free camp. By the time we got there it was dark, it had taken us 2 and half hours.

The next morning we got up early and hit the road. If we were to catch up with everyone today we had a loooong drive ahead of us. They were to meet us at Longreach which was 900km away. We caught them up just outside Longreach at a free camp called Apex park. OMG not a blade of grass to be seen!! A dustbowl. We had a visitor in the evenings, a Brolga, I had never seen one before. Michelle has decided it is her new favourite bird, it was so friendly and majestically walked in had some food and walked off.

We had three nights there and visited The Hall of Fame in Longreach. It really was interesting, we saw it way back in the 90’s when we were here on exchange but lots had changed.

The next day we had a leisure day, time to gather ourselves, make a few adjustments and get some fresh supplies. We all headed in to town, Trevor and Michelle had to go and vote, Jock and I found the first café! We met Michelle, Trevor and Emma as we were walking through town and they joined us for lunch. In the evening we had a fire going and a lady called Heather who is known to Joy and Mick came to interview us. She was from ABC radio western Queensland she chats to travellers now and then. It was broadcast on the radio on the Saturday morning. Unfortunately we were on the road with no service of any kind.

The fire was lit and we gathered around it with lots of stories and laughter. We had finally settled in to our Adventure.