Hughenden, Porcupine Gorge, Pentland Hotel and Charters Towers

After Richmond we took the bouncy road back to Hughenden and discovered that being Sunday afternoon, absolutely EVERYTHING was closed.  It was like a ghost town.  We went to a free camp at the race track and played some cricket until another caravan arrived and Ben immediately ditched us for the 7 year old boy who climbed out.

Hello!!  Anyone home?

Hughenden is the third town on the Dinosaur Trail and is home to the Muttaburrasaurus or “Mutta” as it is referred to by the locals.  There is a giant “Mutta” statue on the median strip in town and an almost complete skeleton in the visitor centre museum.  There are also loads of other fossils, ammonites, gemstones and a sheep shearing display.  

'Mutta' in the centre of town.

'Mutta' in the museum.

Sheep...

On the way out of the visitor centre we booked a campsite at nearby Porcupine Gorge and picked up an info sheet on the fossicking site on the way out there.  The site is on the roadside in an old creek bed and despite digging around for an hour we only found a couple of small broken Belemnites.  It was super hot so we didn’t stay there long.

Fossicking

The road out to Porcupine Gorge is still ‘bouncy’ and is so bad at one point that they have actually had to put up traffic signs slowing everyone to 60 kmph to prevent vehicles bottoming out on a dip.  We took it easy and arrived at a beautiful campground with only one other vehicle there, far off on the other side, barely visible through the trees.  Ben and Jenny went for a bike ride to explore while Lou set up the van and we spent a lovely evening under clear skies with loads of stars sparkling above us.  

 

The next morning we hiked down into the gorge, stopping at a lookout with views of Pyramid Rock.  The trail down is steep steps and we had to be careful not to slip on the gravel.  When we reached the bottom we found ourselves on a sandy beach-like section with a river running along in front of us.   

Being Egyptians near Pyramid Rock

There was a reasonable amount of water in it but it was obviously nowhere near capacity.  It wasn’t really flowing much and there were large pools that would usually be part of one big waterway.  We walked along the bank and could see lots of little fish and some turtles swimming around.  At the base of Pyramid Rock there is a swimming hole and we were keen to cool off after walking in the hot sun.  The pool wasn’t too bad but there wasn’t much water flow so we didn’t put our heads under, much to Ben’s annoyance as he likes to explore underwater and jump off rocks into the deep.

Down the bottom of the gorge.

Nice little swimming hole.

Lou and Ben taking a dip.

Ben and Lou decided that it would be good exercise to jog back up the trail to the van but got about 100m and declared that it was far too hot and steep to do something so silly.

We drove back through Hughenden and headed towards Townsville, where we were eager to see the ocean after a long time inland.  

We stopped overnight at the Pentland Hotel which has free camping out the back.  We had a couple of drinks in the near empty bar, having a good chat with the girl working there.  Ben was full of energy after a few hours stuck in the car and was jumping up and down the stairs and hanging off the rails.  As we walked back to the van he found a big rock to leap onto but slipped and ended up doing the splits, with his front leg scraping along the top of it, grazing the back of his thigh pretty badly.  He was a very unhappy boy and we had to break out the first aid kit because it was way too big a graze for a band aid.   After sorting through the various dressings, pads and bandages we settled on this, which is overkill but made him feel much better….

The life threatening injury.

He was feeling better enough the following morning to don his armour and challenge Jenny to a dual so it must have been a good patch up job.

Construction credits to our friends Daniel and Barb.

Our next stop was Charters Towers.  We only had an afternoon to pass through and wished we could have stayed overnight at least.  It is much bigger than we anticipated and has some great things to see.

The highlight of the stopover (other than Ben agreeing to get a haircut) was visiting The Miner's Cottage - a mining museum where the owner taught us how to pan for gold.  He said it would put us in good stead for our next visit to Sovereign Hill, if we pan there actually knowing what to do we should find enough to cover our admission price.

Ben panning for gold.

Inspecting his find.

Real gold!

Richmond

We drove to Richmond via Hughenden, marveling at how badly the road was constructed.  The surface of it was fine but it was almost constant small rises and dips all the way along, as though the road workers couldn’t be bothered smoothing the land out.  We had to slow right down after the tow hitch hit the bitumen a couple of times when the road unexpectedly dropped before us.  It was like bouncing up and down on gently rolling waves and when we were talking to a truckie over the UHF radio he actually said ‘I hope you brought your sea sickness tablets for this next section’. 

We stopped off in Hughenden for a snack and drink and found an awesome café called ‘FJ Holden’s’ which was full of Holden memorabilia as well as a cabinet full of Coke collectables.  The walls were covered in Elvis pictures and one section looked like it was straight out of Grease.  It was such an odd thing to find in a small town.

Awesome memorabilia in this small town cafe.

We drove through to Richmond (road still awful), planning to stop for longer in Hughenden on the way back through to the east coast.  The caravan park in Richmond had been recommended and it was lovely, sitting right next to a huge lake.  Unfortunately there was a huge storm overnight and we didn’t really get a chance to get down to the lake the next morning as it was still raining.

More dino bins.

Richmond is part of the Dinosaur Trail and is home to Kronosaurus Korner, another dinosaur exhibit with numerous fossils and bones on display.  Where Winton had sauropods and therapods, Richmond has the Kronosaurus, Minmi and Ichthyosaurus. 

Kronosaurus

Minmi

We were looking through the window of the lab and Jenny saw a lady she had met at the caravan park that morning.  Barb and her husband Gary are from Canada and they come over every year to volunteer at the museum, looking for fossils and classifying and reconstructing what they find.  They let us look at the lab and showed us some fossils that they were cleaning.  They also gave Ben a piece of Ichthyosaurus rib bone which is 110 million years old.  Later, as we looked through the museum we were amazed to see the number of fossils on display that Barb and Gary had found.  They are real dinosaur hunters and have contributed a huge amount to the museum.

Ben with the lovely Barb and Gary.

One of the most complete Pliosaur fossils in the world.

There are two fossil dig sites that you can visit to fossick yourself.  You need a permit but it is free and is really just a way for the museum to explain that anything significant needs to be brought back to them to examine.  The area is an old seabed and it’s almost impossible not to find something.  As soon as you turn over a rock you see shell fragments and minute fish bones.  There’s really no need to dig.  They have bulldozed huge areas and you can just turn over the rocks and sift through the dirt there.  We spent a couple of hours there and found Belemites (from ancient squids), lots of shells and some 110 million year old coprolite (dinosaur poo).    

Looking for fossils.

Stephen, AJ and Liam are a family we met at Kakadu and again in Alice Springs. They came to Richmond a few days before us.  Their son Liam had found a fish fossil and it looks to be a new species.  The museum have a photo of him up on the wall so we took a pic and sent it to him.  

 

Winton

Our next stop was Winton which is one town on the ‘Dinosaur Trail’.  There are heaps of dinosaur fossils in this part of Queensland and Winton is one corner of a triangle of towns (Winton, Hughenden and Richmond) with dinosaur fossils and exhibits. They also have dinosaur rubbish bins, much to Ben's delight.

Dino Bin!

In addition to great dinosaur bones, Winton has several other notable attractions, including the ‘World’s Biggest Deckchair’ which is at the rear of an old outdoor cinema.

One BIG deckchair.

Old cinema, also used as a skating rink.

We also visited ‘Arno’s Wall’ which probably started as a terrible eyesore for the shire council but over time has evolved into a ‘must see’ part of the town.  One of the locals (who happens to be the father of Aaron who we met at the Middleton Hotel) started building a concrete wall around his property and embedded every kind of object that you can imagine into it.  There are motorbikes, kitchen implements, bits of machinery, toys, shoes, a letter box etc. You name it, it is probably embedded somewhere in Arno’s Wall.  Inside his property looks like a junkyard so he has plenty of material left if he ever extends the current wall.

Every imaginable bit of junk in one wall.

A favourite spot of Ben’s was the ‘Musical Fence’, which we enjoyed so much that we visited it twice.  They have built a wire fence with specially designed braces and acoustic shelter.  The idea is to hold a tube onto the wire and hit it, sliding the tube up and down the wire to change the pitch of the sounds that is produces.  The fence is interesting but doesn’t really do all that much.  Far more exciting is the percussion area that has sprung up next to it.  There is a drum kit made from a plastic barrel, hub caps and various metal containers and scraps and well as several other stations with hanging empty fuel tanks, car exhaust mufflers and hubcaps.  We spent ages playing songs and bashing all the instruments with the sticks and tubes provided.

Dummer Benny.

One event we couldn’t miss was ‘Ben’s Chicken Races’ at the local pub.  The proprietor (Ben) runs races every night at 6pm, raising money for charity.  There are 8 chickens in the race and he auctions each of them off to the spectators.  The ‘owner’ of the winning chicken gets half of the prize pool and the nominated charity gets the other half.  (You don’t really buy the chicken, you just get to have it as your chicken for the race).  We wanted to buy a chicken but they got up to $25/$30 which was above our limit.

Ben taking the chickens on a warm up lap so the punters could see their form.

And they're racing!

We were also lucky enough to catch a free show by ‘The Crackup Sisters’ who are an acrobatic comedy duo.  They travel around the country (and internationally) performing at rodeos and country festivals and have just bought a house in Winton.  They told the crowd that they’ve been claiming to be from Winton in their shows for years so thought they’d actually settle down there and run comedy/acting/acrobatic workshops.  They are really funny and the show we saw started with a slapstick, exploding toilet joke and lots of fart references which Ben found hilarious.  They also do excellent whip cracking and acrobatics up on high elastic ropes.     

These girls are hilarious and very talented whip cracking acrobats.

And photo friendly!

The main draw card of Winton though was the Age of Dinosaurs Museum.  There are loads of fossils in that area of Queensland and a local farmer found one of the most complete dinosaur fossils ever found.  He founded the museum and a new species of dinosaur that he discovered has been named after him.  We toured the lab there and saw an enormously long petrified tree branch (ie the branch has turned to stone), a large chunk of meteorite, heaps of dinosaur bones and fossils of numerous types of fish, shells and other undersea creatures.

Run Benny, run!

Some of the amazing fossils.

There are so many fossils around Winton that they only go digging for a month or so each year as they have 6 years of backlog to clean and examine.  We saw the staff and volunteers hard at work chipping away rock and dirt to get to the bones underneath.  Others were trying to piece together the broken bone segments like huge jigsaw puzzles.

Their backlog of bones, preserved in foil and plaster.

A lab tech piecing together fragments of a huge bone.

There is also an exhibit about 100kms out of town which is the site of the only known 'dinosaur stampede'.  Hundreds of dinosaur footprints and fossils are preserved in the mud (now rock).  We saw an excellent replica of the stampede exhibit in one of the Winton historical buildings so saved ourselves a long drive and $150 by just looking at that.

An exhibit of the Lark Quarry exhibit.

A handy explanation.

Our next dinosaur stop was Richmond and we stopped off for another bash on the drums and tanks at the musical fence on the way out of town.