10 March 2013 - Fullarton River North Rest Area, Landsborough Highway, Queensland

We are once again parked up beside the road in a rest area shared with trucks. Trucks have been our main companions on the road today, nearly all road trains hauling two to three trailers behind their large main truck unit. Because it was Sunday, I had assumed there would be less of them on the road; not so. Most have been carting livestock and for the last part of the day’s journey and since we have been parked up here, extra big units laden with bulk bins.

When we arrived late this afternoon, it was still 38 degrees in the caravan and that was with all the vents and windows open. Since then and dinner, now that the sun has long gone, the temperature has dropped to a cooler 34 degrees. Chris, who has been monitoring the fridge temperatures, tells me that the freezer lost 8 degrees during today’s trip even with the fridge switched over to battery while we were travelling. Such are the temperatures in this part of the world, now within sixty kilometres of Cloncurry.

This morning we were woken far too early by happy children playing cops and robbers on the grass area beside us; grandsons of both the camp owners and a permanent resident who has custody of her two, but that is another story. It was a delight to consider that these boys were not huddled in front of the television as so many “modern” children are early on a Sunday morning while their parents play at sleep-ins, however we would have been happier if they had left the game for later hour.

We were away soon after 9 am first heading to the showgrounds to dump and then up to the newsagent to buy yesterday’s newspaper which had arrived too late in the day to be sold. The showgrounds were busy with great flocks of corellas, the overflow from the town’s road frontage that doubles as its botanical gardens. It is some time since we have seen corellas, or at least in such numbers as to catch our attention. I do love them but then I am not having to clean up the mess or repair the damage they wreck.

It is rather unusual for a caravan park to lack a dump facility, but then you would not choose to stay at the Longreach Caravan Park if you wanted sophisticated and modern upmarket hospitality.  I believe that the other tourist park does that and for a slightly higher fee. We preferred the more down to earth friendly style of the hosts and fellow inmates at the Longreach Caravan Park.

Once out on the highway, we pressed on to Winton, just one hundred and seventy nine kilometres up the road which continued as long straight stretches, until we drew closer when the Mitchell Grass Downs were suddenly interrupted by a string of mesa formations, a little like a long line of badly made sausages along the horizon  The sight of these broken hills made a pleasant change from the monotony of the almost flat pastureland.

Winton is pleasant town of  nine hundred,  has wide streets, pubs open on Sundays and a real will to draw the tourist dollars. Winton is known as the Dinosaur Capital of Australia and if you did not know that, they make sure you are made aware as you approach the town from across the extensive grassland plains. There is the Australian Age of Dinosaurs on the eastern edge of town, apparently the largest collection of Australian dinosaur fossils and the biggest fossil preparation laboratory in the Southern hemisphere. Here you can also see evidence of the only known dinosaur stampede in the world. (I guess the others just haven’t been found yet.) None of this is really our cup of tea however I am sure it is all quite marvellous for those who have a yen for this kind of thing.

Just in case all of this hadn't alerted one to the fact that Winton was all about dinosaurs, there are dozens of dinosaur feet fashioned in plaster and painted green holding the litter bins up and down the street. All very kitsch! (In our opinion)

Winton is also where Banjo Patterson composed the lyrics of Australia’s unofficial  national anthem: Waltzing Matilda, and also the venue of the first Qantas board meeting. To celebrate these wondrous events, there is the Qantilda Museum which according to some is vastly superior to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach. It may well be however we shall never know because we did not bother to call in.

Instead we wandered up and down the main street, greeted and greeting the ever so friendly locals, checked out Arno’s Wall, a two metre high, seventy metre concrete and rock construction brought in from Arno’s opal mine at Opalton,  125 kilometres down the road. The wall is studded with old lawnmower parts, boat propellers, old machinery from businesses in Winton, typewriters and even a couple of motorbikes. There are eccentrics everywhere!

We returned to the caravan, had lunch and then pushed on again, this time 164 kilometres to Kynuna, a small settlement of just twenty people which looks bigger than the population would suggest. This is the one settlement we were to pass near the Diamantina River which like the Georgina River and Coopers Creek, along with all their tributaries make up the contributing waterways to Lake Eyre.

Cattle grazing on the Mitchell Grasslands

Again we did not stop but pressed on, amazed that the landscape remained unchanged from the endless cleared grassy plains. At this western edge, we noted that the landscape was looking drought stricken and we felt for the few cattle and sheep poking about the dead tussock and red dirt for decent rations. We had heard that the rains had been slow coming here this summer and here was evidence. And even worse still, the Wet Season is nigh finished so it looks like it will be a long hard year for the farmers in this part of the world.

McKinlay is a further 74 kilometres on and is no bigger than Kynuna. Aside from a police station and a roadhouse, it does have the drawcard of the Walkabout Creek Pub which starred in the iconic Australian movie, Crocodile Dundee. We whistled past that and on, keen to reach this rest stop.

Soon the plains gave way to rolling hills, broken by the dry channels waiting for water to flow north to the Gulf. We were again in open woodland,  cattle grazing country with more red dust than green grass and thousands upon thousands of tall red anthills.

And if you had been doing the maths, yes, we have indeed travelled 460 kilometres today to arrive at this fly-ridden camp. It will be lights out early tonight.