Winton

Tuesday the 1st August, after saying goodbye to Jon & Heather we headed for Winton. As we have been here before we thought we might stay in one of the other van parks this time but they were both full. That left the Matilda Tourist Park again. It is a busy and popular little place for tourism and it just shows how many caravanners there are on the road and how much all of the country towns are relying on them.

After setting up camp, getting some washing on and having lunch we went into town and visited the information centre. Found out what we wanted and started walking around town and checking out the history. There is a lot of history relating to the North Gregory Hotel. It was the first place that Waltzing Matilda was performed. Banjo Patterson wrote the lyrics at Dagworth Station about 130 kilometres away.

It was a great old pub. So rerto.

About 4.30pm every afternoon Greg North (just a fluke that he performs in the North Gregory Hotel, how poetic) who was awarded Best Australian Bush Poet on three occasions, organizes a singalong of Waltzing Matilda in the lounge of the pub. He later performs half a dozen Banjo Patterson poems in the beer garden but more of that later. 

Some of the other buildings were great as well. 

We visited the monument to the swagmen of Australia.

In the beer garden of the North Gregory Hotel, after the Waltzing Matilda singalong, there is the daily chicken race and what a hoot that is! The guy running it auctions off the chooks for the race. They are named according to their colours mainly, that is, what food die has been put on their feathers. Half of the money raised by the auction goes to the winner and the other half goes to a fund raiser for some organization in the town. Tuesday nights charity was the local ambulance station.

Linda won the auction for the chook she liked which was called apricot. This is the chook field and the amount they were auctioned for and the auctioneer.

This is a short video of the auction for the chook with the best form.

The chooks are at the barrier.

And Rrracing! They chase the motorized model car with food in it. The guy says they are well fed but they cannot pass up chasing it as they know there are worms in the food as well.

Some videos.

Well Apricot came third but winner takes all. It was a lot of fun.

After the races Greg North performed some Banjo Patterson poetry and he was very good. He also gave a bit of Banjo's life story and the history of the Waltzing Matilda song. Unfortunately the short video grabs I got were not the best of grabs.

Wednesday morning we got cracking and went to the 'Age of Dinosaur' Museum. It was an interesting display. Several dinosaur skeletons, or part thereof, have been found around Winton.

At Junda, about 100kms from Winton a heap of tracks were found and determined to have been made at the same time, small tracks and one larger. It is believed that the larger dinosaur was a carnivore and chasing the others for a feed and it is known as a 'stampede'. The museum here gives a display as an introduction to it.

Following the museum and lunch we slipped back into town and checked out Arno's Wall. It is another quirk of this town where a fellow has put a heap of junk in a concrete wall. 

For the rest of the afternoon I did some blogging while Linda cooked etc. It was good to be here on power and get things charged up and get up to date with the blog. We certainly got to see a lot here as well. Including this beautiful golden glow of sunset. I have not seen a cloud in the sky since we left home so the sunsets at the moments are what you see below but no cloud to add extra colour.

Next stop Cloncurry.