Winton

Thursday, 4 September 2014

Rainbow lorikeets

Happy hour

Mitchell grass plains

The complete town on Corfield

Some hills - very exciting after the plains

Road leading into Winton

Downtown Winton

Billabong

 

Waltzing Matilda sculpture

Once a jolly swagman ...

Down came a jumbuck

Up rode the squatter

and the troopers, one, two, three

... and sprang into the billabong

Trying a saddle for size

Winton Club

Small section of Arno's wall

Arno's garden

A B (Banjo) Patterson

Jolly Swagman

Original money pulley inside store

Original counter and stools (not sure about customer)

Keeping Australia beautiful

 

We discovered that it gets very cold overnight in Hughenden - the spare blanket has now been retrieved from under the bed!  The weather today has been hot and clear, with the humidity sitting on 8%.  Our skin is becoming very scaly and we are producing sparks and shocks every time we touch something.

We only had just over 200 kms to travel today and the Kennedy Development Road was two lanes all the way to Winton, although the lanes were rather narrow as we neared our destination.  The mid section was very good but both ends were rather bouncy.  We were lucky enough to see a pair of brolgas, as well as emus, this morning.  Needless to say, oodles of roadkill on this stretch of road made for very happy eagles, kites and crows.  Unfortunately, the Mitchell grass has not fared well in the drought and the vast grass plains are all but dead.

We are staying at the Matilda Country Tourist Park in Winton – quite adequate for our needs; a real outback caravan park.  Regrettably, the water in Winton is extremely sulphurous bore water – stinks to high heaven, in fact.  The water in our tanks has developed a bit of a taste, so I purchased a 10 litre cask of water this afternoon.  Attempting to remove a jug full of water was interesting, to say the least, with the odd naughty word being muttered by he who was doing the decanting.  Suffice to say we now have a very clean floor!

Winton is famous for two major events:  Banjo Patterson wrote Waltzing Matilda here and the first board meeting of Qantas was held at the Winton Club.  We undertook the tourist walk of the main street, discovering a rather nice opal shop, Corfield & Fitzmaurice’s original store, the North Gregory Hotel (where Waltzing Matilda was first performed and Lyndon B Johnson also stayed there during World War 2 when his plane crashed nearby), a billabong under a coolabah tree, as well as many tributes to Banjo Patterson.  We stopped off at Arno’s Wall and Park on our way back to the caravan park.