JURASSIC PARTY
Professional
and amateur
palaeontologists
on a dino diga paying volunteer on a dig. Every
winter, AAOD goes dinosaur
hunting on far-flung sheep stations
around Winton. Bunking in cosy
shearers’ quarters, diggers spend their
days chipping into the black soil top
layer with hand tools, uncovering
fossils that soil rotation has inched
towards the surface. Palaeontologists
stand by to help tell bone from stone
(it’s far from obvious) and interpret
whatever turns up.
This time around, on the Elliotts’
station 80km from Winton, the
boffins are very excited. Exposed in
the pit is a three-metre-or-so line of
cervical vertebrae – the giraffe-like
neck of a possibly juvenile sauropod.
“We may have 70 per cent-plus
of all the neck here,” says sauropodAfter a tour of the elegant 1920s
homestead and working farm, tuck
into a wagyu steak at the Yacht Club
at sunset. Don’t forget to toast the
sky, skirted by a vast horizon, as
it fills to bursting with stars.
It’s pretty dry around Longreach,
apart from the Thomson River.
A Drovers’ Sunset Cruise
(outbackaussietours.com.au) reveals
it as a prime hangout for whistling
kites – birds of prey that glide, perch
and nest all along the waterside. The
boat stops while we watch orange
splash a darkening sunset sky. On
cue, a dozen or so freshwater turtles
pop out of the muddy water for
a feed. We don the nosebag at
Smithy’s open-air riverside eatery,expert Dr Stephen Poropat. “That
would be fantastic because we
haven’t got a good sequence of
neck vertebrae at all, so this will be
a wonderful specimen.”
Some diggers have racked up
14 seasons. Others are on their first
go round. Some have always loved
natural history; many caught the
dino bug later in life when looking
for post-retirement fun. There’s
certainly no shortage of good
humour and camaraderie.
“It’s like a kids’ sandpit,” someone
says of the dig site.
“Itisa kids’ sandpit!” comes
the swift correction.
The Elliotts’ AAOD has proven
a boon to the community, making
Winton the “Dinosaur Capital of
Australia”. Meanwhile, other local
graziers are harnessing the tourist
potential of their region’s rich
pioneering heritage. Just outside
Longreach, Camden Park Station
(camdenparkstation.com.au) musters
more tourists than sheep these
days, with generous lashings
of country hospitality. The Queen
and Prince Philip visited in 1970,
way too early for third-gen owner
“Outback” Dan Walker’s Outback
Yacht Club, which he launched in
2016 at the station’s artesian bore.BONE COLLECTOR
The sauropod remains
are believed to be
95 million years oldMAIL RUN
Take a
stagecoach
tour from
LongreachTurn the page
TEXT: DAV D LEVELL P CTURES: DAVID LEVELL, ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES