Dinosaur Trail: Winton to Richmond.

By Karina.

It was a Saturday afternoon when we rolled into Winton. The sun was hot; the earth was cracked; the shadows were long; the water smelled of sulphur and the pub was full by 5pm.

We set up on our small patch of grass out the back of the Pelican Fuel stop. We were staying for 3 nights with a solid 2-day itinerary of dinosaurs. This first afternoon was for settling in, so we wandered the sleepy main street with its dusty curbs & dinosaur-foot dust bins, looking for ice blocks. Later we took ourselves to the pub, for the boys first genuine pub meal. The place was full, with only one tall bench table free, so we balanced on our stools and ate our chicken parmas as best we could, to a soundtrack of live saxophone. 

The next day we had a date with the Australian Age of Dinosaur Muesum. This had been a fixture on our trip from the very beginning. Anyone that know us will know that Jonah is dinosaur mad. And not just your usual dinosaur mad, but the kind that knows exactly how many toes specific carnivores, have and is quite judge’y if he comes across a drawing that is either drawn or labelled incorrectly. He really knows his stuff. 

We all thought it was excellent, except for the flies. I was blown away by the extent of stuff that is being found, and the level to which they are sharing it with the public. Jonah knew more than anyone else there; he answered every question the tour guide asked and had all the grey nomads convinced that Neil was some sort of dino-expert that Jonah is imitating.

The next day we headed the 110km south to Lark Quarry and the site of The National Stampede Monument. This is where a huge amount of dinosaur foot prints have been preserved in ancient mud, covered by rock and then revealed by patient hands. It’s quite incredible. The scenery was amazing and the drive there and back was our first true dirt track complete with corrugations, road trains and road kill.

 

 

By the time Winton-Day4 rocked around we were ready to move on. We still had 2 more dinosaur stops to make on our Dinosaur trail, so we packed up, filled up and moved out. Taking the back track north to Richmond, through land that used to be an ocean.

We arrived in Richmond just in time for Neil and Jonah to join a tour with a Paleontologist to a nearby fossil site to dig for marine fossils. Ahive and I did bike-things while we waited for them to return, daydreaming that maybe they’d come back famous.  They didn’t, but Jonah did come back the most obviously ‘stoked’ I have seen him, with a bagful of finds and a second skin of dust. They’d found fossilized shells, fossilized fish vertebrae, fossilized fish poop, fossilized fish mash and what could possibly be a marine reptile knuckle bone. Quite the haul for a 9 year old.

After a good clean and some home schooling by street-light, we headed into town to visit Kronosaurus Korner, Australia’s premier marine fossil museum. Again I was blown away by the huge array of ancient sea creature’y finds. The kids seemed very interested in the pies in the attached cafe, so I knew we were all almost dinosaured-out.

The end of Richmond marked our passage back East towards the Coast. We were all very much looking forward to anything non-dust covered for a while. We made a quick stop in Hughenden on our way through, at the Flinder’s Discovery Center for the last of the Dinosaurs. Jonah was impressed; Ahive was stoked he found a baby sheep to hug; Neil took far too long looking at the shearing historics; and I wondered if anywhere in Hughenden served coffee at 3:30pm on a Wednesday afternoon.

And that was it. The dinosaurs were done and we were coast-bound.