Dinosaur Country

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.Читать далее

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.Читать далее