Winton - Hughendon

Today was a day that took two unexpected twists.

This morning was a last chance to look around Winton. This included having a look through the free part of the new Matlida Centre, the old one burned down in 2015, and a number of relics were lost. The centre is a commemoration of Banjo Patterson. Arno's Wall and the Musical Fence were two other quirky features of Winton that we had to check out. Near the musical fence was the original QANTAS airfield. The airfield had no runway, it was basically an open paddock for the planes to take off. They needed to take off into the wind, so the weather dictated their runway direction.

Twist number 1. When the two other vehicles left for Richmond (the next stop on the dinosaur tour) we missed the memo on the direction they took. When we realised about 15km out of town that they took the Cloncurry Road route (and we didn't) there was literally nowhere for us to turn around for km after km. The decision was made to keep going and meet the family at Richmond.
Twist number 2. Another 30km down the road the Ranger threw up a spanner icon on the dash with a 'check the manual' message. At the same time the ute shut down our accelerator and we rolled to a stop. The engine light came on and panic started to set in. We decided to head for Hughendon but the vehicle shut down another 3 times on us over the next 60km or so. I decided to lock the ute into 5th and we successfully made it to Hughendon, straight to the mechanic. After a quick computer check it was confirmed that the auto transmission had been overheating, mainly due to pulling the van in the 38deg afternoon sun. The ute was cleared to be safe to use for our continuing trip which was the best news I received for the day.

The afternoon was spent having a refreshing dip in the local pool and then some nice afternoon and sunset photos of the region from the top of a local jump-up called Mount Walker. An evening walk around the lake near our camping area finished the evening.

The rest of the crew will arrive in Hughendon to meet us tomorrow.Read more