WINTON WELL
THE second destination in my
Covid Escape series is Winton, the birthplace of Qantas and the home of Waltzing Matilda.
It’s not such a big drive and can be done in a little over six hours from Townsville via the Flinders Highway town of Hughenden. It is bitumen all the way.
There are so many things to do in and around Winton, so many places to explore. If you are set up to camp, spend a night at the Cork Waterhole on the Diamantina River 160km southwest of Winton.
Keep an eye peeled at night because you just might be lucky enough to spot Australia’s rarest bird, the night parrot. You are now officially on their turf. Throw in a line, you might catch a delicious yellowbelly. Take a stroll around the ruins of Old Cork Station and let Redgum’s The Diamantina Drover roll around inside your head. Listen to this song on Youtube before you drive out of Winton en route to Old Cork where the “fences roll forever” and “the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina”. The music and the lyrics will haunt you the entire way “… For the dreaming by the light/of the campfire at night/ends with the burning light of day.”
While you are this far out, you may as well cut across to Middleton via the Chiltern Hills Station track. The Middleton pub is presided over by Lester Cain, a deadpan jokester from the old school. Lester, in his own inimitable style, will tell you stories about the Min Min Light and the filming of movies in the area such as Mystery Road and Goldstone. Lester is likely to tell you that the only reason he didn’t get a part in either movie was because he is “too handsome”. Ask him why the rock formation that featured in Goldstone is known locally as Jackaroo’s Leap. If Lester hasn’t done it, it hasn’t been done. And yes, out here you are in Min Min country. More about that next week.
You can travel on to
Boulia from here, but really you still have so much to do in Winton. There’s the Waltzing Matilda Centre to visit in town and the h architecturally hi ll magnificent ifi Australian Age of Dinosaurs just 24km from main street. Built on top of an escarpment overlooking the endless plains where these very same e dinosaurs once roamed, the Age of Dinosaurs, winner of multiple tourism awards, will leave you with a better understanding of what this country was like back in the days of Gondwanaland.
Don’t leave Winton without ut venturing into Searle’s Store. Here you can buy anything from a stock whip, ammo for your .243, the latest in western n wear and even toys for the kids. This emporium, which once provided tools and clothing for drovers and ringers, is presided over by Bernie Searle and is still much h as it was back in those halcyon n droving days.
Former American president nt Lyndon B Johnson (LBJ), then a congressman, stayed at the town’s North Gregory Hotel in 1942 after the Flying Fortress he was travelling in had a forced landing at Carisbrooke Station not far out of Winton. You can even request to stay in the LBJ Suite.
Two hours out of Winton is Opalton. With its tin huts and narrow dirt tracks pushed through the scrub by bulldozer blades, Opalton is like a throwback mining town of the 1880s. It hides there amongst the emu apple and budda pea, just a smattering of iron, machinery and human life between the red earth and the blue sky. It is like a place lost in time, perched on the edge of the known universe. The prospectors, who live in huts on leases scattered over the opal field, often work alone in deep shafts, just like their forebears did in the old days. Some will only give their first name. Some won’t talk at all. Some don’t talk about the past. Others will talk the leg off an iron chair.
There’s a campsite here with basic facilities. Roaming around it are normally man-shy spinifex pigeons, but these, to the delight of visitors, have overcome their fear of humans. Who knows? If you scratch around in the red dirt you might even find your retirement opal.
The scenery around Winton is like something out of a Larry Mcmurtry western, but at the same time it is so quintessentially Australian. The images of those