Winton

 
 
 

Well we are now in Mt Isa (with broadband coverage) having come from wonderful Winton. There isn’t much at Winton on first appearances, but we loved the character of the place which really hit home to us in the evenings when the caravan park owners put on live country music, dinner and a real Aussie Bush Poet – Melanie Hall. We had such a fantastic night on Saturday, that we came back for a second hit on Sunday. It is really hard to explain why we enjoyed our stay at Winton so much, but it just encapsulated the whole Australian Outback / Country way of having fun together by sharing a yarn (everyone is very chatty and accepting of each other) and having a good laugh. Melanie Hall is a fantastic entertainer with her story telling and poetry – even the kids fell in love with her and Aussie Bush Poetry and we spent our drive to Mt Isa listening to her on CD !!!

I guess one of the reasons the owners of caravan park put on bush poetry each evening is that Banjo Paterson wrote Waltzing Matilda here, so there is a lot of history that they are preserving, but it is also because it is great fun – we are sold on it !!

Our full day activity on Sunday was a drive out to Lark Quarry, the site of the only preserved footprints of a dinosaur stampede. It was interesting to have the encounter of an Aussie T-Rex ambushing about a hundred small dinosaurs (think emu size) at the edge of a lake explained by a Palaeontologist. The footprints showed where the little fellas ran in confusion as the T-Rex tried to stalk them and go for the kill.

There were a few other “tourist attractions” like Arno’s Wall and the Musical Fence, and while they were ok, it is a bit of a stretch listing them as highlights.