Suzanne & Nic Outback Caravan Trip 2025

 30th May 2026: Spent most of the day at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs exhibits.we started with the Fossil Preparation Laboratory, which showed how bones are protected at the site where they were excavated and then processed some years later at the Fossil Prep laboratory. They teach volunteers how to do the intricate painstaking work required with a dental drill (pneumatic scribes).We met volunteers who come back for periods of time year after year. Eventually the fossil is infiltrated by a sort of plastic material to preserve its shape and mounted in some way. Next we saw a display of bones of dinosaurs found around Winton in the Collection Room. They were those of sauropod Diamantinasaurus, sauropod Savannasaurus, the most complete theropod dinosaur Australovenator,  crocodile Confractosuchus, abs pterosaurus Ferrodraco.  We then were transported to the March of the Dinosaurs: the 54 meter long Snake Creek track site removed from its original site on a property near W...

 29th May 2026: packed up and parked just out of town. Had a coffee at the Station Store then walked to the Powerhouse Museum- more memorabilia and the remains of the old Power station for Winton fueled variously by wood and coal then gas and then diesel with all equipment left in situ. You certainly learnt how electricity was generated over the years and what touch conditions of heat and dust the engineers worked under. We then set off for Winton, stopping by the Thompson River to look at it and the many birds of prey there, in addition to welcome swallows and galahs. We went to the Pelican Caravan park, a short walk from town, and set up the van, including a load of washing using artesian bore water( “crystal clear, but contains dissolved sulphur  gas, so smells bad”). We walked into and around town at dusk. I cooked salmon and corn patties with a green salad for dinner.                               ...

 Today we visited the Qantas founders museum, which was unexpectedly extremely interesting! It gave the entire history of the men who started Qantas out of Longreach, the end of the railhead, and so the gateway to country very difficult to traverse by land transport especially in the wet! They had real vision to see the value of air transport in 1920, despite air travel being viewed as unsafe. I really enjoyed learning about the personal life of those involved. We then went on a separate tour of planes no longer in use-the DC3 , the Catalina Flying boat ( used for secret civilian missions during WW2 ( Douglas Dolphin), the Boeing 707 and the Boeing 747 , the latter 2 of which we were able to walk through. We went to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. It was interesting to see the various main historical stock routes for sheep and cattle mapped out- the Canning Stock route from Halls Creek  to Wiluna in WA, 1850km, the Murranji Track from Barkly tableland to Victoria River in NT, 650...

 27th May: Had a more relaxed start to the day seeing the sights of Barcaldine. We started with the Barcaldine historical museum full of collections of stuff, the more recent versions of which were certainly within my memory of being used in my childhood! The only thing really to capture my attention was a beautiful set of wooden Tools made by a Barcaldine cabinet maker Johann Blase who was in Barcaldine 2 years after the town was established. We then visited the AustralianWorkers Heritage Centre, celebrating the lives of Australian workers, starting with the Shearer’s strike of 1891 in Barcaldine. This strike, although ultimately unsuccessful, is credited with being the event which started the Australian Labor movement. The strikers met under the Tree of Knowledge, eventually poisoned more than 100 years later and a young tree propagated from the old one is thriving in the Hertitage Centre precinct! We spent several hours wandering around the many exhibitions celebrating police wo...