My last item on the list at Winton was to visit the Australian Age of Dinosaurs just 25 km outside the town on a 500 ft jump-up. This is a privately run community museum and laboratory, which also conducts annual dinosaur digs. It claims to have Australia's most complete collection of dinosaur fossils. For your money you get a guided tour through the lab where he process of recovering fossilised bones from the rock is explained and you can watch technicians at work. They have enough collected fossil-bearing rocks in store for up to 5 years processing work. Then you do the 500 metre walk to the Collection Room where a 30 minute talk and slide show explains the selection of fossils that are out on display. Again a very slick but informative presentation. They focus on 2 different animals recently uncovered, and nicknamed Matilda and Banjo (hardly surprising at Winton!). Matilda is a 40 metre long sauropod, a plant eater, the largest land-based animal ever on earth. Banjo is a 6 metre theropod, a meat eater. They were found lying together which raises question did they kill each other in a fight to the death?
The 212 km road from Winton to Hughenden returns to the open Mitchell grasslands where the view from horizon to horizon is flat and unbroken apart form a very occasional tree or a telephone network tower. Narrower and rougher than usual, but still a comfortable 100kph drive on cruise control. Am staying at a typical 50s style country motel attached to the Royal Hotel. Basic but clean and comfortable... And a great steak meal for dinner too! It took me 10 minutes to walk around the cbd here. Then out to Mount Walker, 12 km, to see the sunset. Nice cloud tonight so I took dozens of pictures which I won't bore you with! Am just back from a visit to the local laundromat which necessitated a return to the hotel to ask for enough 1 dollar coins to feed the machines. All done now.
A few photos of today's touring will be found
here.
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