By the numbers
1 sealed road
3 emu on the side of the road
We were looking forward to moving on once we left Longreach as we thought we had a productive time in the country town. The next step was to head to Hughenden, where we would spend the night before heading to Winton. The original plan was to go to Muttaburra and up, but that wasn’t what you would call a great idea. The other plan was to go through Winton and then Hughey. We lost reception once we left Longreach and thought it would pick up once we went into Winton. The funny thing about that was we wouldn’t get reception back until we entered Hughenden. We seen the signs for Winton and then the signs changed to ones with dinosaurs and then where you were to head to the dinosaur museum.
I was starting to realise just how isolated some of these towns were especially if you did not have a Telstra phone as mine is Optus. I would have gotten reception anywhere. We didn’t see much of Winton at all as we pointed the nose of the car to Hughenden and along the way we found the temperature to hit 30 degrees, It wasn’t long after leaving Winton that I needed a loo and we had stopped, where I was harassed by flies as soon as I stepped out of the car. One even got inside when I jumped back in, but he didn’t seem to like being out as he soon vanished. its good when the car can give you the outside temperature. We learnt along the way that the nearby town of Stamford near Hughenden was having a race day on the Saturday and we would hope not to need to go back on that road again. When we reached Hughenden it looked like another nice little town.
As we were around a little bit early we could still check into the room and then made our way to the local museum after some lunch. There isn’t much here, but that is quite alright as we can head towards Townsville or Mount Isa from here. The area is known as Flinders and the museum was of the same name. We both walked to the museum and found it was interesting as it spoke about the different regions in the area from the Porcupine Gorge that we didn’t know about to some of the features in town like a historic Coolabah tree used when search parties were looking for Burke and Wills. One of the local stories was a communications tech guy who wanted everyone to have access to communications in the area, and that could explain why we had reception. Its interesting to see a little tourism type video about the locals. I think I do need to know about the historic pubs that are either still surviving or no longer. The different areas attracted different sort of animals that were adapted to the climates some grasslands and arid semi desert like areas. There were also dinosaurs that had been found in the area like the Muttaburrasaurus, which was in the museum as a replica. The whole area was once part of an inland sea so there were plenty of remains to be found if you knew what you were looking for.
Once we were done with the museum, I went to hunt down the Coolabah tree that was linked to Burke and Wills as they had a search party looking for them and the two parties had camped under a Coolabah tree and marked or fired it as a marker. Nearby was a marker that was about the nearby camp for the shearers who striked in 1891. I had seen that in the museum and wanted to find it. I didn’t know it would be a marker at the Coolabah tree. Found a little local history. Where the tree was located it was near the local showgrounds where there were plenty of people camping so that was interesting as there were plenty of caravans there. On the way back there was an open space where the imperial Hotel once stood before it burnt down and was also the location of the town mascot, Mutt the Muttaburrasaurus. There was a nearby sculpture of the flying bird like dinosaurs. They had found a fossil of one of them that was in the museum too. Richmond might have more as well.
I believe I have visited quite a few out of the way museums this trip away and you never know what we will come across next. Its good being able to go to different places without having to worry about baggage allowances and how much I have in my bag. If we had stayed longer here we might have gone further to explore more, but we only have a limited amount of time to get to see everything we wanted to. Tomorrow we head to Winton via Richmond and we shall see if we have to double back to can head to Winton from there. We might even see something of the film festival as it wraps up in town not that I really know where abouts we are staying in relation to everything else in town.
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