Blogs from Winton, Queensland, Australia, Oceania

I have always been fascinated by dinosaurs, and the Jurassic Park movies just heightened my interest. Winton was, thus, a must see town, being Australia's most famous dinosaur relic location. The caravan park we stayed in built a large camp fire each night for guests to mingle and share stories. Our first point of interest to visit was the Dinosaur Discovery Centre, located 13 kilometres out of Winton. We first went on a tour of the fossil preparation laboratory, predominantly staffed by volunteers who have completed a ten hour training course. We then attended a lecture on recent dinosaur discoveries in the area, including one of the largest dinosaurs ever uncovered. There were some fossils on display. We then took a train ride to a covered area where a large area of rock had been disassembled ... read more

Today was the visit to the Dinosaur Stampede at Lark Quarry, about 110km away from Winton, with about half of it on dirt road. Nancy came with us as she also wanted to see it. The road was very rough in places and there were lots of humps and bumps, especially where the road had flood markers, which was often. We arrived in time to look around at the displays before our guide came. He took us into the Stampede, where we stood on a long boardwalk overlooking the footprints while he explained what they were. Basically, 95 million years ago, a large theropod called Tyrannosauropus (a raptor) had cornered a group of smaller animals, many the size of chickens (Skartopus Australis), and some plant eaters almost the size of us (Wintonopus Latomorum). They had panicked ... read more

You would almost think there was inter-community rivalry on the Matilda Highway as to who got what when. Cloncurry, Winton and Longreach, for example, are the home of QANTAS so it seems. There appears to be less competition for the ownership of the song Waltzing Matilda, well, the words specifically. The tune? Well there are several explanations as to the music and its origin. Central to Winton's commercial life is the Matilda Centre. We were not sure what to expect, but it sure engaged us for more than half a day. The Matilda Centre, while giving the story of Australia's alternate anthem, also houses a very diverse museum from the district. The lesson for the day for us was the expression 'Waltzing Matilda'. Did you think it was a dance with Matilda? Well, it was kind ... read more

Well it's been 8 months since I last wrote a blog. Largely because I've been idle and spent most of my non working hours surfing or chucking shrimps on the barbie. But it's also because once I arrived in Australia I was submerged into the normality of western culture and I no longer spent my days being chased by dogs; being accosted by Thai men; getting lost on active volcanoes; being rescued from sinking ferries or being stung by deadly jelly fish. Except for the odd Cane Toad licking bet Aussie life has been too civilised to blog about, until a couple of months ago when I decided to scrap my suburban hobo existence and take a stock mustering job in Queensland. Here I am, week nine of a thirteen week contract slap bang in the ... read more

It's nice to be finally back on the road after the considerable difficulties of the last 6 weeks. I'm not going to dwell on the problems but suffice to say we now have a new camper trailer and a new engine in the 80 series. So fingers crossed our problems are now behind us? We'd like to thank Jen's parents, Leon and Sandra for giving us a home for a number of weeks and feeding us way to well! Also we were assisted by some amazing people in Woolgoolga, what an incredibly friendly little town, thank you all so much. Well we hit the road again on Tuesday May 1 from Toowoomba bound for Mitchell, unfortunately we were hampered by numerous road works along the Warrego Highway which dropped our average speed to around 60km/h for ... read more