Dinosaur country

Our Queensland outback adventure continued with a two-day excursion in sleepy Winton. This quiet country town is 177kms northeast of Longreach. It takes less the two hours to traverse the straight, monotonously flat highway between the two towns. I can confidently report that the drive's scenic highlights, in a nutshell, are Emus grazing the area's sparse vegetation.

However, our journey did have one unexpected encounter. Along the way passed a strange convoy of white trucks trailing miles of cabling. At first, we thought we’d encountered a remote NBN work crew. However, we later learnt that we’d seen the Queensland State Government’s deep crust seismic survey team in action. The survey consists of 40 people, travelling in 20 4WD vehicles, supported by five logistics trucks.

The survey is being conducted along 670kms of highway from April to June this year. The crew work 7 days a week, travelling 15kms a day. A team of surveyors lay positioning pegs, which a trailing team of cable-layers spool out temporary cables attached to geophones (microphones that listen for sound waves). Four Vibrosel trucks then traverse the route stopping occasionally to drop a giant vibration pad that sits mid-chassis. Each pad sends vibrations rolling through the ground for a distance of up to 20 kms. It’s an impressive set-up.

On our way into Winton we stopped for the afternoon at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum. This facility sits on the lip of a mesa plateau that rises above the surrounding Outback. It’s home to Australia’s most famous dinosaur discoveries. Less than two decades ago, very little was known about the nation’s Jurassic past. All this changed after a chance discovery of fossils by a local farmer.

Today, we know that the entire Winton area is littered with fossils, sitting less than two metres underground. Visitors are invited to join the scientists and chip away at the bedrock surrounding the museum’s latest discoveries. The museum is also one of the only locations in the world where you can see an original holotype. That’s what they call the actual stone fossils used to identify a new species. Every other museum usually displays a replica cast of the original stone.

We spent the following day exploring all that Winton has to offer. The town has two claims to fame. It was here that the Qantas board first met to establish the airline. It was also here that the iconic bush anthem, Waltzing Matilda, was first performed in 1895. The town now hosts a museum dedicated to the song.

We wondered if a museum devoted to a song could occupy us for long. However, we spent almost two hours unravelling the mystery of its quirky language and its surprising role in modern Australian history. I learnt that a jumbuck is a sheep and that the song's Matilda isn't actually a woman, it's a bedding roll. It also should have come as no surprise to learn that Waltzing Matilda was inadvertently substituted for the Australian national anthem after Shirley Strickland received a gold medal for the 80-metre hurdles at the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics.

Our final day in the Outback was spent making our way back to Longreach, where we spent the afternoon exploring The Great Machinery Mile in nearby Ilfracombe. This is a roadside collection of industrial and agricultural machinery, some of it is more than a century old. Perhaps the most interesting item on display was a yellow grader, reputably one of only three in the entire country. Who knew!

Saturday morning saw us catch a flight back to Brisbane and on to Sydney. Our verdict? Longreach is worth a visit. We learnt more about the Australian Outback on this one trip than on any other we’ve taken into the interior. As for me, I’m making plans to buy McKinnon & Co (Yes, I am joking). They’ve got the local tourism market cornered with some incredibly well-crafted pioneering experiences. If the price is too high then I know what I’ll be doing in retirement. I'll be sitting in the back office managing this awesome business.

Going bush

When asked to name a quintessential Outback town, names like Broken Hill and Birdsville typically come to mind.  I visited the former more than a decade ago and have plans to see the latter someday soon.  However, from a pure tourism viewpoint, Broken Hill proved to be a one day wonder.  I suspect Birdsville will prove no better.

The same cannot be said for Longreach, the self proclaimed capital of the Outback.  This cozy regional centre sits on Queensland’s Landsborough Highway, midway between Mt Isa and Rockhampton.  Midway means 700 kms in either direction.  Longreach sits on the rim of the Thompson River’s floodplain.  Its location marked the western terminus of a rail line stretching inland from the Queensland coast.

Garry and I spent the Easter weekend exploring a surprising variety of activity that awaits visitors.  We arrived late on Sunday afternoon courtesy of the daily Qantaslink flight from Brisbane.  I’d made a last minute change to our itinerary and booked a cabin at the Kinnon & Co Outback Lodge.  This proved to be a savvy decision.   We enjoyed three nights in air-conditioned cabin on the edge of a dry grass paddock grazed by the occasional kangaroo.

Our first Outback adventure began that evening with a steak meal at the nearby Stockman’s Hall of Fame.  The dining area sits under an open-sided shed.  This is the Outback after all.  Temperatures rarely fall below 20C at night.  Patrons are kept cool by the whirling 3-metre blades of a giant ceiling fan.

The following morning we made our way to the Qantas Founder’s Museum.  This venue, based on the southern fringe of the local airport, was the first permanent base for Australia’s national airline.  The airline was founded in 1920, just up the road (all of 177 kms away) at Winton.  The original hanger is still there.  It’s now a heritage listed building.  The museum houses many of the airline’s most famous aircraft including its first jetliner, the Boeing 707, and it’s last Classic Series Boeing 747.

Garry and I booked the Wing Walk Tour.  This behind the scenes tour took us through the bowels of a Jumbo Jet, before culminating in a walk out onto one of the plane’s expansive wings.   We discovered the location of its infamous black box, made our way from first class into the avionics bay and on into the forward cargo hold.  We saw where the emergency oxygen is kept and discovered just how enormous its central fuel tank is.

We finished the day with a sunset cruise along the Thompson River.  We had hoped to travel on the historic Thomson Belle paddlewheel steamer.  Unfortunately, the boat was full and we found ourselves riding a rather plain flat-bottom skip.  However, it gave us an opportunity to photograph the old lady as she steamed into the sunset.  Our river cruise finished with a fireside plate of bushman’s stew; some truly tall tales from Scotty, a local bush poet, and the cinematic retelling of an infamous cattle-rustler’s grand heist.

Our second day was spent exploring the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. We spent more than three hours wandering through its exhibits learning about the nation’s Outback pioneers. It's an incredibly well-executed tourist attraction. The Stockman’s main building consists of three soaring corrugated iron arches. According to a plaque outside, it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth in 1988.

On Wednesday we took a trip back in time to the days of the Cobb & Co stagecoach.  Kinnon & Co has faithfully reconstructed stagecoaches that take tourists on a horse-drawn joyride through the local bush.  Garry and I were invited to sit on the top of the coach.  It seemed like a great idea at the time. 

However, by the time we’d galloped along bone-dry dirt tracks, we found ourselves covered in a fine layer of dust.  It was rather sobering to contemplate how dusty we were after 30 minutes.  I admire those early travelers who rode the coach for days on end.  It's not business-class Qantas style.
 

Follow this link to read about our overnight trip to Winton and the Outback's spectacular dinosaur region.

Welcome to Middle Earth

It’s been more than twenty years since I last visited Queenstown, New Zealand.  It’s a magic place, surrounded by breath-taking scenery.  Here, the epic landscapes of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings triology were brought to life.   The town itself sits on the shores of picturesque Lake Wakatipu, framed by the soaring granite peaks of the Remarkables.

I was fortunate enough to relive my memories of Queenstown in late-March.  I attended a three-day business conference at Millbrook Resort, ten minutes from the town.  The excursion began with a stunning afternoon flight from Wellington that took us down the eastern coast of the South Island

I’d booked myself a window seat in anticipation of good weather.  As luck would have it, the day dawned bright and sunny, a perfect day for flying.  For more than an hour I sat glued to the window watching the Southern Alps glide by.  I could see how each meandering, braided river had been forged from the melt water of gleaming white glaciers and snow-capped peaks.
 

While the conference itself was intense, we did enjoy an afternoon respite on the second day.  My company surprised us with a helicopter excursion into Mount Aspiring National Park.  We flew along Skippers Canyon, home to the Shotover River.  Our track followed the winding Skippers Canyon road, before branching off to fly past Lochnagar.  This small lake was formed in the aftermath of giant landslide that swept across a narrow river valley.  The scar of the cataclysmic event is still visible today.

The climax of our flight saw us fly up the slumping icy ramparts of an isolated glacier before sweeping back across a neighbouring valley where we landed on the summit of a slopping ice field in the Forbes Mountains.  The view was spectacular.  It truly was New Zealand at its finest.

The remainder of my “afternoon at leisure” was spent walking into Arrowtown.  The main street of turn of this century gold mining outpost has been beautifully restored in recent years.  It’s just as I recall it from the pictorial calendar images of my childhood.  Tiny miner’s cottages nestled among towering Autumn-coloured Popular trees.   I spent almost an hour wandering along a new walking trail that follows the banks of the Arrow River.