Day 56: Julia Creek to Winton, 275km

Winton is just a small central Queensland town with population of just over 1,000, so naturally it had three petrol stations, three pubs, three museums, two hardware stores, multiple cafes, a library, pool, water park and as many shops as Caringbah. It is the Dinosaur Capital of Australia, and the Waltzing Matilda capital, and the opal capital of QLD, and the gateway to the gulf, etc. etc.

The A.B. 'Banjo' Patterson statue at the Waltzing Matilda Centre

We arrived during the annual Opal Festival which consisted of about 20 stalls set up on the closed main street, selling "boulder opals" and other stones that these locals have mined on their own properties, and ground and polished etc. Some really nice stones but a hard life for these guys. We watched the families packing up their stalls in the ute and heading back home at the end of the day from our balcony on the historic North Gregory Hotel, where Waltzing Matilda was first performed in 1895.

The North Gregory Hotel (It has been rebuilt a few times since the 1800s)

Written locally by Banjo Patterson, there is a Waltzing Matilda Centre which also has a lot of Winton history. In the mid 1800s, opportunistic "squatter" pastoralists took the land in the area to make a fortune in beef. They later switched to wool, and this region was involved in two large shearer strikes in the 1890s. These ended badly, with pastoralists bringing in non-union labour, protected by police and military, and the loss in these strikes led unionists to move towards getting more political paper by forming the Labor Party, with QLD having the first labor government in the world in 1899.

The WM Centre was pretty well stocked with historic paraphernalia, including a steam train, and original train carriage and many vehicles. For the car enthusiasts, the vehicle below is a Jeffrey Quad. Built from 1913 at the Thomas B Jeffrey factory Wisconsin. Thousands were produced for WWI as a transport truck, it was 4WD, with what looked like a central diff which drove the front and back wheels (which were set on rigid "dead" axles) through a hub system, raising the shafts to protect them) through separate diffs. It was also "4-wheel steering" and had solid steel wheels lined with rubber. And all driven by a 4.9L 4 cylinder engine

They had a poetry reading at the North Gregory Hotel, answering the "Myths of Waltzing Matilda", performed by bush poet Gregory North (who is actually a nerd from the Blue Mountains who spends his winters in Winton). I didn't even know what Waltzing Matilda meant until now, and in fact the original text from Patterson's diary had the words "roving Australia" stuck out, replaced with "waltzing Matilda" after he heard the term (which meant the same thing, wandering with your "Matilda" which probably came from the German term "Mathilde" which was used to meant your camp gear or whatever kept you warm, but in Australia was used to your swag). Anyway, it became popular when Patterson's fiancé put it to the music of a Scottish Hymn she remembered hearing at the Warnambool Steeplechase. Drovers and shearers sang it in QLD and took it to the Boer War and WWI and WWII, where it was picked up by other Australians and people from other countries who identified it with Australia.

Winton is also the town where the first directors meeting for Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service) was held, before headquarters were moved to Longreach.

The road into Winton