Wednesday, August 4, 2010

DAYS 86 FROM SOUTH TO NORTH - TOP END (NORTHERN TERRITORY) TRIP

19 July 2010

WINTON


A cold morning this morning – 9C degrees. However, my expectation that the days will get cooler has been proven wrong so far. By 9:30 am it was 20 degrees and it reached 28 degrees in Winton.


The road to Winton was not too exciting. No more termite mounds. Endless plains with Mitchell grasses in places


with an occasional rocky jump up.


Winton was very interesting. The Waltzing Matilda Centre was great. The enactment of Waltzing Matilda was fabulous. They believe that the Combo Waterhole near Kyuna was the billabong referred to in the song. We spent hours here.


I was also lucky to be here at this time as the exhibition in the gallery was Margaret Barnett’s Shiboti Unbound’ . Her shibori Track pieces were beautiful. The rest of the centre was also very interesting. The Winton Telegraph exchange was here. It is hard to believe that it was in use until April 1984.


We went to the historic Corfield and Fitzmaurice building. The life size diaroma was well done. I was intrigued by the dinosaur fossils here. A pity we don’t have time to do the dinosaur trail on this trip. I collected information so that we could include it in a future trip.


We were not impressed with Arno’s wall or the musical fence. Most of the so called instruments are not part of the fence and reminded me of projects I used to do with high school students.

From Winton we headed south east along the Matilda Highway. The area is a catchment area for Cooper’s Creek. We spent the night at a great rest area called Crawford Creek.

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