Waltzing in Winton

 95 million years ago!!!

We arrived in Winton in time for a morning tea visit to the local bakery and I look though some of the Boulder Opal stores. We then headed to the Banjo Paterson ‘Waltzing Matilda’ Centre. This iconic Australian song was first performed in public by Banjo Paterson in 1895 at the North Gregory Hotel in the centre of town. The highlight of the visit for us was playing 12 different versions of the song on an old-style record player. At least we stopped at 12 as there have evidently been over 500 different recordings!

On Sunday we drove 22kms to the Australian Age of Dinosaurs attraction. This was awesome! A highlight was seeing the March of the Titanosaurs. This was only discovered in 1999 as a severe flood unearthed the rock bed in a local farmers creek. They called in the experts and low and behold, several dinosaur prints were identified deep in the mud (which had turned to stone). The creek bed was then painstakingly removed, piece by piece, and re assembled, under cover in controlled temperatures, at the Age of Dinosaur attraction. The fossilised footprints are over 95 million years old! We also toured the fossil collection centre, where the bones of Banjo, Matilda, Anne and Alex are on display – amazing, and the Fossil Preparation Laboratory where volunteers were busy cleaning bones found from recent area digs. This is a must-see experience.

We ended another great day catching up with Penny and Brian at the Tattersalls Hotel for dinner and drinks.

The white bones in the photos are from a cow - so good comparison to the size of the dinosaur bones found.

The left photo is of a dinosaur sacrum, located at the base of the spine connected to the pelvis. The photo on the right shows pieces of spine.