21-24 July 13

Our first night in Winton at the overcrowded Pelican Caravan Park had us cheek by jowl with grey nomad caravans and trailers. Its only saving grace was that it was just down the road from the Tattersall's Hotel where we all got together for our last meal with the Hay River group. But it gave us time to wash ourselves and our clothes, and have a sleep-in for the first time in weeks. Well, a sleep-in until the caravan next door decided to turn on its air-conditioner full blast at 4.30am…

Retracing some of our steps of the previous day, we headed south on gravel and corrugated roads once again to visit the centre of the boulder opal mining area - Opalton. This time without a convoy and without the blinding dust of the cars we were following, we saw many red kangaroos out in full daylight, on the road, in the wide open paddocks or resting in the shade of the roadside trees and scrub. Wedgetail eagles picked at carcasses around waterholes and kites and crows fought them for some of the spoils.

The entrance to Opalton sported a big sign - it was the biggest thing there. Once Opalton had been home to 600 or so population when big opal pipes were found and mined and fortunes were made. Then, there was a town with a police station, a blacksmith, stores and other commercial activity. Now the sites of the old buildings are marked with a small sign. But the only actual relic to be seen was 6 short posts sticking up out of the red earth, the foundation posts of the police station. Not a lot really. There was a sort of shop but it closed a year ago according to a local we chatted to on the road. Apart from that he thought there might be 30 or so people living in the town, scattered in and concealed by the bush, mostly people who lived alone and liked it that way. A couple of more commercial looking operations were all there was to see. So much for Opalton - one hundred kilometres each way is a long way to go to see nothing.

The Bladensburg National Park is some several thousand hectares once a station and now a National Park. The road passed through it for a while and we turned into the side road into the park proper. A wide (dry) creek crossing was not the usual soft sand but was hard rock and the crossing was easy. The park has a bush camp on the edge of a permanent waterhole in the creek was quiet and lovely. The sun set in a blaze of colour and we snuggled up for the cold night in our small home.

Next day we visited the old homestead, now the rangers' office, and took a four-wheel drive track out to a jump-up - a rise in the flat landscape, a mesa of remnants of the original higher landscape. The track became rougher but on top of the jump-up the ground was level and hard. Cut deeply into the ground was Scrammy Gorge and as we approached a rare Yellow-Footed Rock wallaby took off - too quickly for a photo. At Scrammy Waterhole, another permanent and deep pool, were the remains of the hut of Scrammy Jack, a hermit and boundary rider who worked the neighbouring property and died around 1900. Scrammy is an old English term meaning left-handed and apparently old Jack's hand had been crushed by a wagon wheel. Around the rubble of the hut were shards of old broken glass, the translucent green of old containers, the cobalt of medicine bottles, the thick brown glass of ale. He must have lived on tinned food with old flattened rusty metal cans strewn around. His grave, bordered by recently restored iron piping lies not far from his home.

The need to buy some provisions and to try and replace Russ's jeans which got torn on some sharp metal bars in Opalton brought us back to Winton for the night. This time we tried another campground which, though slightly more expensive than the rather downmarket Pelican, boasted much newer facilities (but with the same smelly sulphurous artesian bore water), free washing machines and a voucher for a free drink each at the Tattersall's Hotel. How could we resist?

Winton itself has some interesting old buildings and boasts the pub where Banjo Patterson's Waltzing Matilda was first performed. Of course there are some touristy museums and statues to the man and the song in the main street, but the main charms of the street are the old shop fronts, the open-air theatre, an amazing general store with a souvenir tea-towels next to a signs for guns and ammo, and the North Gregory art deco pub.

We had seen Lark Quarry and its dinosaur stampede fossils at the end of the Hay River trip with the group, but the other big deal in Winton is the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum which is about 25 km out of town on the top of a jump-up. The stunning architecture of the quite modestly-sized building holds a collection of the recent important finds of dinosaur fossils and the high-tech 'show' which went along with it was impressive and informative. In another building were the laboratories housing the recent finds and the preparation tables where diligent volunteers worked at preparing the fossils for study by the palaeontologists connected with the site. Volunteers are constantly needed and Russ and I think that would be a great way to spend some time, either on digs or in the prep rooms. Maybe sometime in the future…

Our journey now was on the blacktop all the way to the big town of the region, Longreach. The flat Mitchell grass plains reach to the horizon broken only by the occasional stunted tree. And all along the road, large flocks of kites and crows. The roadkill was extraordinary. We had noticed before that the bitumen always had lots of roadkill while on the gravel and dirt roads the number was low. Here with the high speeds and the larger number of trucks travelling by night, it seemed that there were mangled animals every 20 metres or so. Red kangaroos, mostly younger smaller ones, massive wild pigs, emus and plump wombats all fresh and in various stages of dismemberment by the scavenging birds. But given the huge numbers of particularly the kangaroos all through the areas of the central west we had travelled, it was not surprising that there should be so much slaughter on the road.

The road passed through acacia and eucalypt wooded areas as we approached the Mitchell River, Longreach's artery. Water in abundance flows under the bridges, a change from the dry river and creek beds we have become so used to.