DAY 8 - HEADING TO WINTON.

We were keen to leave Longreach and head further west to Winton.  We had been to Longreach previously so for now every where we have come from so far wasn't foreign to us.  Today however we were entering virgin territory.  We left the caravan park around 10am and headed into town to stock up on a few things before we left.

The drive to Winton

Ian and Kathy in front of us.

Lots of big road trains on the road

Beautiful scenery

The drive today was lovely, the landscape so different to what we had encountered two years previously when we were out this way when everything was dry and barren.  Today we hardly noticed any road kill,  there were trees, and shrubs, and colour on the horizon.  We saw beautiful ghost gums, and even saw emu's roaming on the plains.  That was a bit of a highlight for us.

The trip to Winton was only about 180kms so we didn't have any stops.

Welcome to Winton

 We arrived in Winton around 2pm and booked into the Tattersall's Hotel and Van Park.

Setting up in the van park

 Unfortunately we were only able to book one nights stay here.  We would try again in the morning and see if we could stay an extra night...

By the time we had set up our vans and had a quick bite to eat it was almost 4pm.  We decided to head down town for a walk and go check out the Information Centre to see if we could possibly book into the Showgrounds for the next couple of days.

Well apparently they don't open the showgrounds until all the van parks in Winton are full and overflowing, and weren't keen to open it for just a couple of vans.  They told us to come back the next day if we couldn't find anything. We had a bit of a wander down the main street.  In Winton all the bins are like big dinosaur feet, reminded us a little of Penguin in Tasmania where their bins were penguins,

Rubbish bins in Winton

We have been assured by John Ross that this is an awesome bakery

 From here we headed to the North Gregory Hotel.  We had heard about their famous chook races and thought it might be a bit of fun to go and check them out.  They didn't disappoint us and provided some great entertainment for an hour or so.

We even tried to place a bet between us all, but our limit was $20 and that was soon reached so we just enjoyed the experience instead.

The coloured chooks from Winton

Chook racing at its best

Their form

Let the race begin

And they are off and running.

 As these were held out in the back of the North Gregory Hotel, we just headed across the road and we found the famous Arno Park and Arno Wall.  As we still had a little bit of time before sunset, we decided to wander around it and have a good look.  Words don't adequately describe it you have to see it for yourself....

About to check out Arno's Wall

Steve at Arno's Wall

This wall have everything built into it.

  Just across from the wall, in Arno's Park we came across this lovely simple wooden cross.

Arno's Park

From here it was just on sunset so we decided to head back to our caravan park.  As we got closer, we could see that the Tatts hotel was filling fast with patrons.  We'd head lots of good reports about the meals here so decided pretty much on the spare of the moment that we would have dinner here and neither Kathy and I felt like cooking.  What an icon pub.  It was just buzzing with activity and had a breat vibe about it.

ceiling inside the pub

Steve waiting to order our meals in this icon pub

 Man what meals, they were huge but well cooked, almost like a home made meal

Ian had the crumbed steak chips and salad

Kathy and I both had the chicken parmie

Steve had the lamb shank and vegetables

 We had a bit of a chat over dinner to try and plan out our activities for the next day.  We were both heading home to our own vans tonight as Steve had some work to catch up on and really wanted to get it out of his hair.  I was happy to edit the hundreds of photos I had taken today and Ian and Kathy wanted to catch up with skyping their grand children...
We are still finding it hard to believe that this holiday which we had planned for over the last three years had finally arrived and we were now living the dream.