Min Min Adventure - Day 8 - Winton to Longreach.
So...there was no unusual wake up call this morning but I did hear some weird grunting noises, in the night, from the guy sleeping out under the awning of the caravan next door. He sounded like a feral pig having a nightmare.
We noticed this morning that we had pitched our tent underneath the nest of a pair of Black Headed Cuckoo Shrikes. It didn't seem to put them off though.
We had to kill a bit of time this morning as our dinosaur tour was not until 11.00 am. So we went to see Winton's Musical Fence. I was underwhelmed.
The Australian Age of the Dinosaurs Museum is about 26 kms out of town. We got there te required 15 minutes before our tour began.
We didn't know what to expect but the tickets were $55 each, which seemed a bit steep, but the tour apparently took 3 hours.
The Museum is atop a 'Jump Up' , a large flat topped hill that rises up from the endless plains below. It was certainly a spectacular setting with a breath taking view.
First we had to head over for a tour of the Laboratory across the top of the rocky plateau. This bit was very much like the tour we had out at Eromanga but not quite as good though our guide was lovely and knowledgeable. This Museum all began after a local farmer discovered some unusual rocks o his property. Guess what they turned out to be? Yes Dinosaur fossils. That first find ended up in a museum in Brisbane but the farmer and his wife, following subsequent excavations, wanted their finds to stay locally and attract people to the area and help the town and so the Museum was born.
Here in the Laboratory we saw the same kinds of plaster encased fossil finds waiting to be properly freed from their mud casings and works in progress the partially excavated remains of various recent finds. We also saw the remains of the first Pterosaur found in Australia.
Our next session was back where we came in and there in 'The Collection' we saw the remains of four dinosaurs recovered in the Winton region. The most important was 'Banjo' a carnivorous Terrasaur, the first found in Australia. They had found the complete bones of one of his legs, claws and his lower jaw. He was found in the same spot as Matilda, a large plant eating sauropod. There was much speculation about how they both died.
it was lovely and cool in The Collection but outside the temperatures must have been knocking 40 degrees. The final part of our tour was very 'Jurassic Park' with a trip on a mini bus down to Dinosaur Canyon. I was not looking forward to it in the heat at all.
Our guide for this part was the best yet. After a short drive we came to another area of the plateau where two new buildings were going up. One was to be a kind of Planetarium as the whole area had recently been named as a Dark Sky Reserve. The other building was to house a sixty metre set of dinosaur tracks that had been brought to this spot from a flood plain and the new building was going up around it. Both should be open by the middle of next year.
We sat in 'The Outpost' before heading along the walkway to Dinosaur Canyon and our guide told us that the whole plateau/ 'Jump Up' had been donated to the museum by a local landowning family. Now, I said I had been thinking the entrance fee seemed a bit steep before but, now, even if I only had had the chance to walk along the Dinosaur Canyon, I would have said it was worth it. I've said it before but the whole setting of the place was out of this world ,,as you will see in the pictures and it is not finished yet with plans to extend the walkway in future.
We would definitely go back in a few years to see how things have progressed.
It was 2.00 pm so we headed on towards Longreach. There was heavy traffic today. We overtook two vehicles! The other difference was we started to see clouds in the sky and then just before we arrived in Longreach our phones finally had signal again after 5 days.
We are camping in the Longreach Tourist Park. The guy who checked us in seemed concerned that we were camping because storms had been forecast.
'Oh, we'll be fine we' we said.
We had a dip in the pool because the temperatures are in the high 30's and we went into town and had dinner in the towns only Indian restaurant. The food was very nice even if the surroundings were a bit tired and the ambient music awful!
Back at the tent the wind has picked up considerably. It is even windier than that awful night at Betoota. We can't, surely, blow away but the poor tent is being buffeted terribly. Another night of very little sleep ahead I think.
