Yetman to Winton

Tuesday 24.5.2011:   Today we meet up with Di's brother Graham and wife Barbara and their friends Paul and Jenny to travel to Longreach and Winton together.Temperature 10 degrees to 19 degrees – rainy to start.  Only had about 60 kilometers to travel today, arrived in Goondiwindi shopping area and walked around the shops then went back to the car and rang Graham, he had just arrived, so we all went on to the The Top Tourist Caravan Park & set up for the night, Graham, Barbara, Paul and Jenny in cabins and Lloyd and I in our Coaster, we introduced them to disc bowls and they all enjoyed the game, then we went to dinner at the caravan park where they cooked Spanish mackerel fish and salad, followed by chocolate pudding and custard, very nice.

Wednesday 25.5.2011:  7 degrees - 20 degrees windy cloudy and cold.  Drove 315 kilometers, stopping at St George on the Balonne River for lunch, then drove on to Surat as Graham phoned ahead and that is where they could get two motel rooms, he asked the owner could we park nearby and he said we could park in the car park at the back of the property, it was very, very cold but we did survive.  We walked up to the main part of Surat and went in the Cobb and Co Museum which was very interesting.

Thursday 26.5.2011:  6 degrees - 24 odd degrees - hot day no clouds.  Drove 153 kilometers to Injune, as Graham rang ahead and they could get a motel room there. We stayed in the van park.

Friday 27.5.2011:  5 degrees - 25 odd degrees - hot day.  Drove all day long straight road, we didn’t stop at Carnarvon George as Graham’s hip couldn’t take walking too much, very boring run to Emerald, where we shopped, then drove on to the Gemseekers Caravan Park at Ruby Vale out past Saphire.  Graham, Paul and Jenny had lovely accommodation, the owner had recently built the cabins, they were very nice.

Saturday 28.5.2011:  Went on a tour of an underground saphire mine, and Barbara did some fossicking through a bucket of rocks.

Sunday 29.5.2011:  7 degrees - 27 odd degrees - sunny hot day.  Long drive stopped at Jerico for lunch. Jerico has a open air theatre in the main street with comfortable looking deck chairs. The park toilet block had murals on each side but not too sure what they are saying.

Went on to Barcaldine the town where the labour party was founded after the shearers stwike and the formation of the AWU last century. The tree under which the shearers met has been preserved as a memorial. Arrived at The Discovery Holiday Park, Longreach late in the afternoon had dinner at the woolshed with entertainment. Todays drive was mostly over the Mitchell Grass plains - very flat country with sparse trees but the roads have many bumps which make the bus bounce a lot.

Monday 30.5.2011:  8 degrees - sunny & windy.  Today we walked across the Van Park to the next street and up a short distance to the main road and walked along the Botanical Walkway to the Qantas Museum, Graham, Barbara, Paul, Jenny and Lloyd all went through the museum, I stayed at the café and had a break as I thought it would be the same as when we were there five years ago, they must have added more as it took them quite a while to go through.  Lloyd and I went on a tour of a 747 plane, it was very interesting, we walked up the steps, its like walking up two or three stories of a building, we sat in each section of the plane, saw the black box at the back of the plane invented by an Australian by the name of David Warren, the cockpit with a million and one switches or buttons amazing.  We saw a film on the emergency escape chute which becomes a raft that was also invented by an Australian Jack Grant.  We walked back to the van park and drove into Longreach to look around and have lunch in the Bakery and we booked a McKinley river cruise followed by bush tucker and damper for tomorrow night.  Happy hour was at Graham and Barbara’s cabin.  Caravans and campers just kept on coming in as well as a school group from Brisbane.

Tuesday 31.5.2011:  8 degrees - sunny and warm.   Walked up to the main road again and followed the Botanical Walkway along past the Qantas Museum to the Stockmen’s Hall of Fame our entry price included the Hall of Fame an outdoor show with a youngish bush guy with two beautiful horses he rode bareback, played his mouth organ, then his guitar.  He had four sheepdogs, two of them rounded up some sheep and bought them in, the other dogs had a turn of rounding up the sheep as well.  Then he bought eight bullocks in to the arena and yoked them together, he then walked them outside over a small hill to get a big log and drag it into the arena and pull it up onto the dray, he was an exceptional guy gifted with music and had a lovely way with animals.  The other part of our ticket included our lunch at the heritage centre which consisted of a lovely Stone cottage with a large patio area come café at the back.  We had BBQ hamburgers with chips followed by a cappuccino.   After we walked back to the Holiday Park we just had enough time to get into warm clothes for the campfire tonight as the temperature really drops once the sun goes down. 

We were picked up in a bus at 4 pm and driven the other side of town and down to the edge of the Thompson  River for our sunset cruise when we came back we sat around the campfire and the captains, and deck hands put on different caps and became chefs and waiters, serving stew and bread followed by apple pie and cream, then we had damper and a cup of tea.  While we were finishing our tea, one of the guys Scottie came out in his moleskin pants and vest and no shoes, I guess he was aboriginal he was quite happy walking on stones here and there, he didn’t seem to notice them, anyway he had a very cheeky sense of humor and told up quite a few bush poems, he quite was quite a character.  We had a good night and it was very cold, they took one bus load of people back to their accommodation, then they took another bus load of us to Discovery Park.

 

Wednesday 1.6.2011:  12 degrees - 30 degrees.  Drove from Longreach to Winton over the Mitchell Grass plains, long boring drive 280 kilometers, Graham and Paul like to drive without any breaks in between - no morning tea, doesn’t do Lloyd’s back any good.   Arrived in Winton around lunch time so we walked a little way on the main street, saw the Matilda Centre which is all about the song Waltzing Matilda, its origins and verse by Banjo Patterson, then had lunch at the hotel.  Saw a willy willy in the main street while we were walking back to see through the Matilda Centre.   We booked into the Matilda Van Park, dinner was on with a show by Mel & Suzie, bush poets, so we booked Graham, Barbara, Paul and Jenny in to have dinner and hear Mel & Suzie, they all thoroughly enjoyed it.  We said goodbye to Graham, Barbara, Paul and Jenny as they decided not to go to Lark Quarry to see the dinosaur footprints the next day, but to head home to check on the building of their house.

Thursday 2.6.2011:   14 degrees - 30 degrees.  Stayed at Matilda Caravan Park at Winton  and had a lovely day resting and reading.  Saw Mel & Suzie again at night.

Friday 3.6..2011:  14 degrees - 30 degrees.  Decided go out to the Dinosaur Museum just south of Winton, however , Lloyd  discovered the bull bar was sort of  loose and  you  could push on it and it moved about a bit, he thought something was broken underneath, so we went to the garage to check it out and the mechanic told us to go out to see the Engineers as it needed welding.   We found the Industrial Area and the Engineer who had just pulled a dif out of a big truck, so he told us to come back at 9 am next day.  We decided to go back to the Caravan Park and have a quiet day resting and reading.  Had dinner then went to the shed to see Mel and Suzie perform their bush poetry.  Lloyd’s back not good.

Saturday 4.6.2011: Beautiful cloudless day 15 degrees - high 20s.  Woke early to be over at the Engineers workshop on time at 9 am, we drove in his driveway with him hot on our heels, good timing.   He put his head down and tail up lifted the bull bar with his forklift to take its weight, then got down underneath and found that two bolts had broken that fastened the brackets to the frame and  they couldn’t be removed. He decided that the better job would be to weld the brackets to the frame which he did. The whole job took him just under an hour, he was a very nice chap and did a good job.

With the welding complete, we felt confident to get on with our sight seeing by going out to the Australian Dinosaur Museum Stage 1 which was about 6 kilometers south of Winton on the Longreach road, then you turn right and travel on a dirt road for 10 kilometers winding out to a jump up which is an aboriginal term for an uprising of the land like a Messa with a flat top of mostly of hard rock which had not worn away like the rest of the land.  We arrived about 11.30 am and the next tour started at 1 pm, so we had a cuppa as we had missed morning tea, then had a walk around looking at the view, we noticed the trees seemed to be all growing in lines,  running in the same direction, so we thought there must be water under the soil which feeds them.  We had lunch and were ready for our tour at 1 pm., our tour guide was Freddie an aboriginal with a lovely face, he was very good at explaining all about the dinasours, he spoke very fast but explained how the bones were first found, then how they dig the bones up today, they are about 1 and a half metres down,  and how they are treated and secured in plaster and sacks to preserve them, volunteers then work with small drills like dentists drills to clean up the bones and finally the paleontologists identify what the bone is.  It was a very interesting tour. 

After the tour we went on a short walk to a lookout and saw where they are starting to build the new Reception Centre, shop and café.  We left the jump up and headed back to the main road and back into Winton, then found the road out to the Long Waterhole in Bladensburg National Park, more dirt road, so we took it very easy, we found a lovely spot beside the water and spent the rest of the afternoon watching and listening to the birds.  The Crane was lovely to watch gracefully walking along the edge of the water with hardly a ripple coming from his feet, he walked up one side then flew across to the other side, he looked so graceful when flying and his wing span was very wide about 4 feet or more.  We watched him catch a (yabbie NSW) red claw (QLD), then the chap next to us walked down to the edge and frightened him and he flew across to the other side and dropped his red claw.  Shortly after the sun went down with a beautiful pink glow in the sky, we watched our lovely crane fly off after all his searching with no dinner.  We then cooked our own dinner, had an early night after our early start to the day and lay in bed with the curtains pulled back watching the myriad of stars in the night sky, amazed at the wonder of  God’s wonderful creation.

Sunday 5.6.2011:   13 degrees - high 20’s.   Bladensburg National Park, woke at 6.45 am peeped out the window,  dawn was starting to break and the colour was beautiful brilliant red glow on the clouds which had appeared in the sky and black water, with the birds starting to wake up, what a magic peaceful place.   Left about 10.30am to 11 am drove into town and dumped the grey water, then went to the SPAR shop to pick up some groceries and on to the garage to pick up some diesel.   We then started on our 214 kilometer trek to Hughendon.  The countryside is very flat from horizon to horizon, every now and then you would come to a dip in the road where they have added a culvert under the road,  this really made our bus really bounce up and down, I guess this is what caused the damage to the bullbar and Lloyd‘s back.  This part of the road reminded us of the Nullabor, not many trees.  We looked around and found the trees seemed to be in lines running mostly east west, we figures with what we had learnt the day before  about how they found the dinosaur bones about a metre and a half down in the large cracks in the earth, these trees must be growing in small creeks which run underground.   We saw very few stations, cattle, sheep, emus and a willy willy..

Arrived in Hughenden about 3 pm checked into the Allan Terry Caravan Park and relaxed with a cuppa.