Winton

Less than 2 hours drive up the bitumen was the turn off to the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, south of Winton.
A fantastic tour of the "behind the scenes" workings, followed by an excellent presentation on several unique specimens. As you can see, Trixie's femur is long than my whole leg.
This little recently discovered pterosaur "Butch" was pretty neat. 
There's so much more to see compared to when I visited in 2009, shortly after the AAOD Museum opened. Very exciting,  and all local discoveries. 
After a day of so many museums,  it was great to set up camp in Bladensburg NP & watch the sunset.

Popular posts from this blog

Mitchell Plateau and Kalumburu road.

Image
From Mt Elizabeth station we returned to the Gibb River Road, then turned north towards Kalumburu, and then onto the Mitchell Falls road. This section was not as bad as we had expected so we made good time,  arriving at King Edward River/Munurru campsite by late afternoon.  The next morning we set off to visit the nearby rock art sites, featuring Wandjina paintings, but with many layers of differing styles created over thousands of years. In contrast to the huge rock shelters we saw in Kakadu, the rocks at Munurru were more a collection of scattered boulders, with art panels on the lower surfaces. Interprative signage was minimal, giving a sense of exploration to the experience.  Later we found a guide book specific to this site - it would have been handy! After a refreshing swim in the nearby River we set off to  Mitchell Falls campsite. This was only 76km away, but due to the rough road it took us over 2 hours. Palm trees feature...
Read more

The Gibb River Rd - Windjana Gorge to Mt Elizabeth station

Image
From Tunnel Ck we drove north-west to Windjana Gorge, and from there we started our Gibb River Road journey. Looking at tourist information it would appear that travel along this stock route mainly involves floating around in a series of beautiful rocky waterholes and waterfalls. However,  in between these delightful oases one has to endure many hours of driving along dusty, heavily corrugated roads. Windjana Gorge itself lived up to expectations,  with towering limestone cliffs, and several freshwater crocs sunbathing on the riverbank. It was interesting to see a nautilus fossil in the cliff face. I found this map helpful to try and piece together the jigsaw puzzle of ancient reefs that we had crossed on several occasions.  From Windjana Gorge we headed north-east to Silent Grove campsite and Bell Gorge, passing a team of graders, so the road was slightly better for a short distance- about 10km! At Bell Gorge it...
Read more