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Published: August 13th 2009
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Arno's Wall
Part of Arno's Wall in Winton We left Mount Isa quite early on Monday morning heading south east, so we could make Longreach before dark. We traveled through Cloncurry, McKinlay (we stopped at the Crocodile Dundee Pub), Kyuna and then Winton. At Winton we looked around at some of the local attractions including a statue dedicated to Banjo Patterson who wrote Waltzing Matilda at a nearby station. We also saw the building where the first ever meeting took place for Qantas. I read that Qantas was conceived in Cloncurry, born in Winton and raised in Longreach. Just next door to the Qantas building is a wall that has been made by a man called Arno who is an eccentric, which was very interesting to look at. He has added all his junk to the fence and it has become one of the towns major attractions. Its called Arno's wall and is around 70 metres long. The town also has the worlds first musical fence which was built in 2003. The fence has wires and they can be plucked or strummed with a stick to make music. It was really cool! Along side the fence was also a drum kit and chimes made from junkyard materials. It would
Musical Fence
Nathan playing the musical fence in Winton. be great to see a performance held there one day.
After leaving Winton we drove on going through a few little towns until we reached Longreach. We decided to stay there 2 nights as there was quite a bit to see. We stayed at a free camp spot on the river just outside of the town with about 50 other caravans! It was amazing how many people were there.
In the morning we went to look around the town and then went to the Stockmans Hall of Fame. It was a great museum but would have been better if we had not already visited all the outback towns and seen all the information already in each town. We did learn some new stuff though which was good. That night we went for tea at Merv and Maree's. There kids were very excited we came to visit and kept us entertained through the whole night.
The next morning we headed east towards Emerald to visit Kresten. We passed through Barcaldine along the way and a few other small towns. We reached Emerald around 2pm and were too early, kresto hadn't finished work yet, so we went for a walk
in the Botanical gardens. The gardens were beautiful, they would have to be the best botanical gardens in an outback town either of us had ever seen.
We went to Krestens flat that he shares with a friend when he got home from work. The guys went skiing and I caught up on some stuff. We had a visit by a very friendly cat with a cut off tail that sort of curled (not sure if it was cut off or born like it) It had a similar temperment to my old cat, he dribbled all over me and wanted lots of cuddles.
Today we have traveled south through Rolleston, along the Carnarvon Highway to Roma and then east to Miles where we are camped beside the river now. We have found the roads/highways in outback qld are terrible compared to other states. The bumps at times were so bad that when we stopped and went into the van everything was everywhere!! It also was not nice bumping up and down constantly while driving. Not far to go now so they should improve soon. Tomorrow we will be in Towoomba to visit Nathans Grandad and his wife Dorothy. We will
Friendly Cat
Missing a tail but gorgeous all the same. stay there the night and head for Brisbane Saturday morning. Today has been 10 weeks on the road!
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