The Old Mary Kathleen Town
Continuing our travels with Mum and Dad, we decided to stop for a night at the old Mary Kathleen township. Once a booming Uranium mining town, the only remains are the eroding bitumen roads, some remaining concrete slabs from the houses and stores that once made up parts of this town and the open cut mine a few Kilometres down a corrugated dirt road.
Tori, who is becoming more and more interested in collecting different rocks was in her element when she met a fellow camper, and very keen fossicker, who offered to show her the many different rocks that he has collected in the area. He even let her choose one to keep and let her take as many as she would like from his scrap pile once he left! (His scrap pile was anything but scraps!) I doubt we would find anything like his so called "scraps" no matter how hard we looked! Tori was thrilled! As was I. How very kind and generous!
From Mary Kathleen we drove on towards Julia Creek. We decided to pull into a great little free camp just outside of the Julia Creek township.
With river frontage, and just off the highway, we set up camp for the night.
After chatting with the only other couple camping in the area, we soon discovered that they were catching some huge Red Claw Yabbies in the water river! Awesome! After hearing this news we quite quickly had our own yabbie nets in the water!
Unfortunately we didn't catch any.. BUT somehow we managed to catch a rather large Freshwater Flathead instead!
Its funny how things work though as our neighboring campers were a little sick of eating yabbies, and we were rather keen to eat some yabbies! So we decided to swap our catches. Whilst Ella and I happily enjoyed our yabbies, our neighbours enjoyed eating some fish for a change.
The next day we packed up and headed into Julia Creek. A friendly little town we enjoyed checking out the Dunnart exhibit at the information centre.
Such cute little animals that could quite easily be mistaken for a mouse... But on close inspection are just adorable and look a little like very miniature possums!
From Julia Creek we made a last minute decision to head to Winton to watch the Camel Races the next day... Wow, wow and wow... One of the best last minute decisions so far, and high on our list of "best days yet!"
Winton
Arriving in Winton, we decided to stay at the back of the North Gregory Hotel in their designated caravan area.
The North Gregory Hotel itself has a lot of interesting history behind it. The main point of interest being that Banjo Paterson played his very well known and now very famous, Australian Classic, "Waltzing Maltida" publicly here for the first time.
Mum and Dad put the front of the North Gregory Hotel
The pub is also unfortunately famous for burning down.... After being built in 1879 it burnt down in 1899, 1916 and again in 1946...
Luckily the hotel after again being rebuilt in 1955, is still standing to this day.
Unfortunately this little town rich in Australian History is still prone to more than its fair share of fires. On June 19th this year, the renowned "Waiting Maltida Centre" was also burnt to the ground due to a suspected electrical fault. With many irreplaceable piece of history lost forever, it was a very sad day for this town.
Waltzing Maltida Tribute statue out the front of the recently burnt down centre..unfortunately this is about all that still remains...
With plans to rebuild though, and many other great things to see this town is still high on my list of places to visit.
From "Arno's wall" to the "Musical Fence" there are some great little things worth checking out.
Musical FenceIn no time at all we were chatting to some friendly locals and after a few games of pool one of the guys very generously offered to take us AND the rest of the FAMILY on a FREE helicopter flight early the next morning!!! WOW WOW WOW!!!! I was speechless (for once ;))
Early the next morning we all excitedly woke early for our sunrise flights.
The girls could barely contain their excitement as our pilot warmed up the two seater helicopter, and I was much the same!!!
One by one he flew us high above the trees and low between the trees! We chased kangaroos and saw the town of Winton from high in the sky as the sun rose.
Although none of us had ever flown in a helicopter before, we were all certain that we could not of had a better experience if we had paid for it!
Returning from our flight we were all on cloud nine! And for me this was yet another item I had managed to tick off from my bucket list! At the rate I'm ticking things off along our travels I may just need to start a new list!
After breakfast we topped off our awesome start to the day by heading to the Camel Races.
Besides the Camel Races there was many events for the general public to join in with. From Donkey Race, Mutton Busting, Poddy Bull Riding, Camel Tagging, Three legged Races, Egg Throwing Competitions, Barrel Pumping Competitions, Motorbike competitions plus many more!
We all had a brilliant day joining in with as many events as possible.
Ella, since she saw her first Rodeo in Kununurra, had been asking if she could ride a "Bull" in a rodeo one day. My answer has always been "of course, if you want too!!"
Well.... I didn't actually realise that this was actually something she could actually, freely participate in with no prior experience!!!
As soon as she realised she to could tick off something from her bucket list there was no stopping her... (In the process I think she may have aged Gran, Pops, Gary and Myself a good 10yrs....) I'm happy to admit I was quite nervous letting her enter... But luckily the organisers are prepared for these inexperienced, little ,fearless dare devils and their worried parents, and so they do their best to assist these riders when it comes to the "falling off part..." MOST the time they don't quite hit the ground... (Though we did see a few nasty falls before Ella's turn that heightened my anxiety!!)
Lucky for us all Ella had a great time "Poddy Riding" and "Mutton Busting" and also avoided any injury, walking away with a grin from ear to ear.
After a long, but fantastic day out, we all headed back to our caravans. But not before Ella had made a new friend "Abby." Abby along with her Grandma asked if we would like to spend the following day with them. They offered to show us the sites around town and offered the girls rides on Abby's various motorbikes.
We decided that sounded like great fun! So the next day we spent most of the day visiting a few playgrounds, the skatepark, a local swimming hole and riding around on the Motorbikes.
Ella on Abby's motorbike Well he was very generous with Tori and let her take a couple of extra pieces. Yet again she was extremely happy with her fastly expanding collection of stones and rocks.
After 3 nights in Winton it was time to move on. After having such a great time we really didn't want to leave! But it was time to drive on to our next stop... Longreach!
Xx
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