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.