Australia's dinosaur trail

Our next stop was Hughenden, site of the world’s emptiest (but most excellent) skate park, and most refreshing (if not a little green) public swimming pool. Oh – it also had a visitors centre boasting a decent dinosaur / fossil exhibition.

Muttaburrasaurus

Muttaburrasaurus in the flesh



We headed to Richmond the next day, another of the three fossil centres out here.  Millions of years ago, this area was covered by an inland sea.  It's pretty hard to believe when you see the dry channel country that has replaced it. 

There have been many fabulous marine fossil finds on surrounding cattle stations over the last couple of decades.  There are a couple of fossicking sites here (tourist brochure – “you’ll dig Richmond”) so we set out to try our luck before the heat set in. 

After a paltry amount of digging (okay it was pretty hot) the digger went on strike and the fossicking was moved to a more obvious location.  Here we found plenty of evidence of life under the sea.  We then moved to another location where the kids took a 4WD driving lesson with Rich while Kel braved the hot sun to look for more fossils.  Back in Richmond, we checked out the Kronosaurus Korner fossil museum where many fine specimens of Kronosaurus (pre-historic crocodile-like thing), Pleisiosaur (long necked swimming dinosaur), Icthyosaur (pre-historic dolphin-like thing), turtles and Nautilus could be seen.  The fossil displays were pretty stunning.

Kronosaurus

Minmi - not marine, just unlucky

Pliosaur

Winton was our next destination, again at the end of a very long, empty and sometimes scary highway. We decided to bar the caravan parks and head out of town to stay in Bladensburg National Park.  It took 20kms of pretty rough dirt road to get to the secluded camping spot.  It was dusty, hot and for the first time – completely empty.  Be careful what you wish for!  Alert but not yet alarmed, we decided to give it a shot.  After setting up, did the 40km round trip into town for an ice-cream, some water and a bash on the outback drum kit.  

No shops open to top up supplies so improvised with a hot dog meal back at the campsite followed by a wonderful night and campfire under the stars completely alone (except for the sheep(?!) and the feral cat Rich stalked for a while with his slingshot).

Next day’s mission was a trek out to Larks Quarry – site of the dinosaur stampede.  A couple of hundred kms south of Hughenden and Richmond, this whole area was once the forested foreshore of the inland sea.  Possibly not a surprise to hear that we were running slightly late (it was 9:00am), resulting in a ‘relaxing’ drive along a 100 km dirt road at 100km/hr to make the 10:00am session of the guided tour.  Fortunately we arrived alive and in time, if not in complete marital harmony. 

The kids enjoyed the first 10 minutes or so of the tour in the large metal shed with great acoustics. Rich and Kel were initially a little bit suspicious of what appeared to be fossilised footprints of a one-legged dinosaur hopping after its prey until we were assured that dinosaurs ran one foot in front of the other. Once suspicions were allayed, and the kids were seated comfortably on the ground, Kel and Rich were able to fully appreciate what was on show here.  The older gentleman presenting the information has surely devoted his life to this place.

 We headed back to camp in a much more leisurely fashion and enjoyed lunch and another afternoon of tree climbing, bone collecting and swinging out over the river.

We then spent the later part of the afternoon at the ‘Age of Dinosaurs’ museum where we were presented with some very interesting dinosaur bones. What set this exhibition apart was that they presented the bones (holotypes, no less, for the zoologists out there) and then showed a computer generated model of the bones moving inside the dinosaur and Jurassic Park like mini-movies to provide some context for our younger audience members.  A seriously impressive (not to mention massive) couple of dinosaur specimens!

Finished the day with another night under the stars at our secluded campsite with a campfire, this time not completely alone.  Rich decided at some point during the night that this place was ‘the middle of nowhere’.  Rich went to bed watching the feral cat, David Attenborough style through the gauze of the caravan.

The next morning we were approached by neighbouring campers and their kids who had a bit of a chat and provided us a map of a garnet fossicking area in the direction we would be headed on the way to Mt Isa.