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Dinosaur Country
  • Russell Woollams
  • Kate Woollams

Dinosaur Country

Outback Queensland 2023 Read more
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  • Trip start
    April 7, 2023
    Dinosaur Country

    Hitting the road

    April 7, 2023 in Australia ⋅ 🌬 23 °C

    A trek through the central part of Queensland was one trip that we had never done. Back in 2017 we did get out to Eromanga (on the way to Birdsville) to see the dinosaur museum. This was our chance to see the entire Dinosaur Trail, based around the Winton area. We planned the trip to start on the western side by entering QLD at Hungerford and then it was a last minute decision to come back into NSW via Hebel and past Lightning Ridge. The highest we would get was to the Porcupine Gorge National Park, about an hour north of Hughendon, a destination that all the Hughendon locals said that we had to go and visit. Our travelling party for this trip included my parents, pulling their New Age van, my sister and family (well 4 of them in total) towing their black series camper and our family of four giving the Outback Journey its first real practice run before our big trip in a few months.Read more

  • Dinosaur Country

    Home - Bourke - Fords Bridge

    April 7, 2023 in Australia ⋅ 🌬 30 °C

    We left home at around 11, after a frantic morning of last minute prep we got our infamous photo at Nyngan and met up with our travelling party at the logical place, the big Bogan. After a quick fuel stop down the road at Bourke we made it to Ford's Bridge before dark. It was aRead more

  • Dinosaur Country

    Fords Bridge - Thargomindah

    April 8, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    From Ford's Bridge we headed North (after photos with the big yabby) and had lunch at the park in Hungerford. A quick chat with the publican confirmed our direction of travel along the dingo fence and along the west side of the national park. In the late afternoon we found our site in a bare patch along the river.Read more

  • Dinosaur Country

    Thargomindah - Eromanga

    April 9, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 30 °C

    Today's goal was to get to the Eromanga Natural History Museum by 3pm. We decided to take a slightly longer road through Quilpie, as this was the first time we had travelled on that road. We didn't expect any dirt, but there was some. They were doing a long length of road works so next time there should be more tar. We decided to call into the small town of Toompine along the road, just for a look. The small locality, which is basically just a pub, hall and tennis court was a hive of activity when we arrived. About 50 caravans, campers and vehicles were all set up in rows to temporary power for a big weekend of something. That something happened to be a regional clay target shooting event. The regular sound of gunshots made it sound like the wild west. The pub there had a new young couple (and their baby) running the newly renovated pub/coffee shop. If you are ever driving through Toompine make sure you drop in.
    Just before Quilpie we climbed the 14 meters up to the top of Baldy Top where we got a great view of the Quilpie Shire. Quilpie itself was pretty quiet on Easter Sunday. A quick visit to the local Catholic church showed a quite impressive opal incrusted alter and lecturn. They seemed to be mainly constructed from boulder opal. I'm not sure how much they would be worth but the church had better have pretty good insurance as they would be worth quite a few dollars.
    We were going to stay at the caravan park in Eromanga but a last minute change was made to change to a free camping area next to the Eromanga community hall. Nice bathroom facilities and access to water made this a great choice for us.
    We arrived at the newly renovated Natural History Museum exactly at 3:00 for our 3pm tour. The tour started in their new building. We last visited 6 years ago in 2017 and only the back shed existed. It was nice to see such a fancy, modern facility in the middle of the outback. It was mainly funded through state and federal tourism grants. Sadly, they are not able to get the same funding for their dinosaur research.    Read more

  • Dinosaur Country

    Jundah - Winton

    April 11, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☀️ 33 °C

    Today the plan was to get to the jump up at Lark Quarry to camp for the night, before an early start to the dinosaur stampede tour the next morning. We started the day by waving farewell to our chicken friends and heading north through an ever changing landscape of grassy paddocks, open plains, shrubby areas and more Malley trees. During the day we only passed a road train and about two cars, but had to give way to a lot of cattle and calves. Every five to ten km or so there would be yet another ramp to cross over and therefore a new paddock to enter. At one stage the road became so narrow and grassy it did feel like we were literally driving along a farm road. Eagles, kites and smaller kestral type birds continued to circle us from overhead along the way. Most of the road was dirt, and dusty it definitely was! The red dust was so fine and just hung in the air. Our convoy needed to spread out to try to keep the dust out of our vehicles and also to make our viewing range safe, especially to see those pesky cattle. Dust did find its way into our van, we did leave one window not quite locked, but overall our DRS dust reduction system, which is just like an air pressuriser for the fan, seemed to do a pretty good job at keeping the dust out.
    As we arrived at Lark Quarry by 2pm a decision was made to do the tour that afternoon and head to Winton before dark. Lark Quarry is home to the dinosaur stampede, a set of 3300 dinosaur footprints that got trapped in the mud many moons ago. The first footprints were found by an opal fossicker on his break way back in the 1960s. A team were able to uncover the footprints from underneath a thick layer of sandstone. The stampede is now covered by a large, insulated building to protect them for generations to come. It is the only evidence of a dinosaur stampede in the world and the footprints are still able to tell some stories of that fateful day.    Read more

  • Dinosaur Country
    Mud tracks at the Age of Dinosaurs in Winton
    Searching for opal at Winton (in the shop)The royal open air theatre (during the day)The Royal open air theatre (at night)The museum at the Winton theatreThe girls all found an opal each (from the barrow)

    Day in Winton

    April 12, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 36 °C

    This morning started with a walk of the main street today in Winton. We visited an opal shop that also included a back room with both opal history and memorabilia as well as a big wheelbarrow full of boulder opal offcuts. The girls could buy any two rocks for $10. They all found a nice one each. The owner showed them some tips of what to look for but couldn't find anything better than they found. A good find, girls!
    A change of plans had us doing the Age of Dinosaurs tour at 1pm today. The facility was in an amazing location, on top of a jump-up about 20km out of town. There was an impressive view of the countryside from up there. The tour started with a video and an explanation of the different dinosaur bones on display. They had the bones of banjo, a relative of the dinosaur who caused the stampede on display. Our visit also included a tour of their research centre and workshop, where they took us through the process of removing the bones from the ground and then out if the surrounding rock layer. The third part of the tour was a little train/trailer trip out to the newest section where they had another indoor dinosaur stampede encased in mud turned to stone. This one was about 50m long and was painstakingly moved piece by piece from another location to the top of the jump-up. An amazing feat.
    Tonight is dinner at the Gregory Hotel. The Gregory is famous for being the first place that Banjo Patterson recited his poem 'Waltzing Matilda'.
    After dinner we spent an hour in the outdoor theatre, watching their historical footage of old local ads, news reels, what looked to be one of the first Sylvester and Tweety cartoons and then a couple of slapstick black and white clips from yesteryear. It was a beautiful, calm, starry night and really was a lovely step back in time.    Read more

  • Dinosaur Country

    Winton - Hughendon

    April 13, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    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

  • Dinosaur Country

    Hughenden - Porcupine Gorge

    April 14, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    Today we started with a sleep in! Well.. most of us.. Dad decided to go on a sunrise walk over the lake to capture some cool shots and found many kites to be floating above the water!
    Before meeting up with the rest of the crew we decided to have a quick stop in the FJ Holden Cafe which was home to many old antiques including an original jukebox! We had some spiders and iced drinks to cool off and headed out to do some fossil fossicking where we found some cool rocks and crystals with interesting shapes and imprints!
    We met up with everyone else at the Flinders Discovery Centre and had a look through their fossils, dinosaur casts and a video that explained the layers in the ground that make up, particularly, this area and Porcupine Gorge.
    Speaking of, our next stop was Porcupine Gorge! On the way we stopped at a couple 'point of interests' which were all extremely disappointing. After leading everyone up a rocky hill with not a good view in sight and more than a few burrs to pick out of socks, we decided to head straight to camp.
    Once we figured out where everyone would set up, we had some arvo tea which included some snacks from the Hughenden bakery.
    Everybody came for a walk to have a sneak peak at the 'pyramid' which we will explore more tomorrow, further down into the gorge!
    Whilst enjoying dinner we had a couple visitors in our campsite. Bettongs. They were pretty friendly but not to each other! Hoping to see them again tomorrow!
    We finished the night with a gaze at the stars and took a few pictures to capture the beauty of the night sky!    Read more

  • Dinosaur Country

    Day in Porcupine Gorge

    April 15, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 28 °C

    After a little sleep in today we made pancakes for breakfast, which was a challenge on the Weber barbecue but we got it to work alright. Something to work on for sure!
    After a yummy breakfast we got ready for our walk down into the gorge. We hopped into our swimmers and got on the track - which was much more challenging than we expected.
    We definitely deserved a cool swim in the gorge's waterholes when we got down. The water was freezing at first but it wasn't long before we were all bombing into the water and the heat of the day was too much to bear.
    After the hot walk back, a sit back and relax was well deserved and after our energy was back we went on a second walk to a lookout, overlooking the gorge below!
    Tonight we had a beautiful pork roast with amazing crackle - thanks Mum! We were greeted again by our bettong friends and had a nice communal fire with the rest of the group. A beautiful night!! (Except for the bugs!)

    -Kate!    Read more

  • Dinosaur Country
    Porcupine Creek Gorge
    Lookout further upstream at Porcupine GorgeLiterally in the middle of nowhere, or at least between 2 towns I had never heard of!Belimnites (fossilized squid) found in a creek bed

    Porcupine Gorge - Longreach

    April 16, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    Today was a massive driving day, due to the decision to take a scenic route to Longreach, and for a few events that unfolded along the way. We pulled out of the Pyramid campground before 9, but didn't pull in to our free camp at Longreach until around 7:30 tonight.Read more

  • Dinosaur Country

    Augathella - Hebel

    April 19, 2023 in Australia ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    From the home of the big meat ant all the way to Hebel!
    We had a big driving day today as we made our way closer to the border. We started early and got ourselves packed up and on the road, not forgetting to get some photos with the big meat ant 🐜.
    Morning tea was just around the corner at Mitchell which had us kids on the park!
    We stopped for lunch at St George along the Balonne River, had a look around town and saw some kombis!
    Another couple hours of driving and we made it to Hebel where we set up camp, took some sunset photos and had a quick drink stop at the pub before having dinner.    Read more

  • Dinosaur Country

    Hebel - Home

    April 20, 2023 in Australia ⋅ 🌙 15 °C

    The final drive for the final day started with a quick pack-up and fuel-up at Hebel before heading back over the border. The road around Lightning Ridge had been resurfaced in patches but this had not removed any of the bumps and bounces that the road continued to throw at us for the first hour or so. Not that the road the day before in Queensland was much better.
    Morning tea at Walgett was also our farewell to the Haddon's who took a drive through the Macquarie Marshes back to Narromine. Nan and Pa followed us back to Gil to clean their van and spend the night.    Read more

    Trip end
    April 20, 2023
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