Lightning Ridge, Augathela, Longreach, Winton (Lark Quary)

Hello again fellow chums,

It is Matt here, I just thought I would update you all on our travels into the wilderness of god's country (Queensland)

After leaving Lightning Ridge we headed north to Augathela which was was a dot of a town and is one of those struggling places to keep it's locals, but there was a

(photo; louise fossicking at Winton)

great butchers, where I had bit of a yarn and purchased some succulent marinated pork spare ribs and cooked them up on the camp fire that night, washed down with copious amounts of cask red wine.

The small town butchers have the best cuts of meats where they usually get their meat straight from a local farm.

Augathella was also the home of a movie, "Smiley" made in 1955 and also had a great wall mural. As you can see from the pics, we stayed at some really nice camping spots that are littered along the Matilda Highway that runs through the centre of NSW and QLD.

(photo; dinosaur footprint @ winton )

Longreach is quite a large town with a population of 3500 country bumpkins and home to the Qantas museum, which was well worth the visit, it was a typical country town where all the shops close down at midday on Saturday and closed all day Sunday.

After Longreach we high tailed it to Winton, which was made on the sheeps back (I had the best Sunday lamb roast lunch and the local pub for $10) and now is also now famous for its dinosaur fossils, and stampede (pictured). To see the dinoasaur stampede, we had to go on a tour group trip 100kms south of Winton, to see the Lark Quary, which was practically ALL corrugated dirt road!

(photo; hall with dino stampede inside)

But well worth the trip to see 65 million year old foot prints of a dinosaur stampede, where a larger dinosaur is chasing the smaller ones (as in the pics), looking at this made me feel like a caveman waiting for a something to come around the corner to eat me!

After spending the past 4 nights camping, we have decided to splash out and stay at a caravan site for the night so we can have a nice long hot shower, wash our clothes, hair, etc and be around civilisation.

(photo; lou o/s old store Winton; 12.7.10)

Hope everyone is doing well and will keep you all posted within the next few days.

Ciao...

(photo: matt at longreach/qantas museum 10.7.10)

(photo; campsite o/s Longreach 11.7.10)

(photo;campsite at Mitchell 9.7.10)

(photo: Us at Lightning Ridge; 7.7.10)

(photo: Auguthella, NSW ; 5.7.10)

Please excuse the layout ; we are getting used to the blog format; We are currently in Undara National Park and we are visiting the lava tubes here (near Cairns) which are unique and formed 160,ooo years ago ; we shall take photos and try and upload more; we have had very bad reception for wi fi the past few nights so hopefully we can get better coverage in the future!