The Dinosaur Trail, Country Towns Near Extinct and Desecrating the Temple

The towns of Winton, Hughenden and Richmond seem to eke out an existence on the back of tourism to their dinosaur shrines and what remains of a once burgeoning sheep farming industry. The Hughenden Visitor Centre doubles as a museum of dinosaur bones and history of the area. A map outlining the decline of the sheep farming industry is rather dramatic, illustrating the number of sheep stations once operating compared to today. Whereas the whole area was essentially utilized for sheep farming 100 years ago with what I’d estimate to be maybe 60 to 80 properties and millions of hectares, today only 4 or 5 are still in operation. The underpopulated and dilapidated towns seem to reflect this – the Hughenden Grande Hotel is not looking so grand these days. We’ve taken for granted the accessibility of reasonably priced fresh food on our trip and found ourselves almost barren of supplies on a Sunday in Hughenden without a supermarket open until Monday. Fortunately the bakery was open but only had white bread on offer – something I wilfully try to avoid desecrating my body temple with due to the highly processed flour and high glycaemic index akin to a sugar cube. I’ve gotten to the point now that the smell of foods such as your basic fatty, salt-enriched snag, KFC, Maccas and deep-fried chips actually make me gag a little - white bread is getting there. We were out of fruit and fresh veg as well and I could feel my body start craving these items but alas none was available in the immediate vicinity.



Having made our way through the Muttabarrasaurus exhibit and other fossil finds on display in Hughenden we headed to Richmond, some 110 kms back towards Mt Isa – the self-proclaimed capital of the dinosaur trail! Our concerns for nutritional deficiency in our diet were wiped clean as we entered town with a “FoodWorks – open 7 days“ sign beckoning us in to the main street. It was a meagrely stocked grocery store but had the essentials which would see us to the coast. The carrots looked like tubers on steroids – massively thick things but surprisingly tasty. Stocked up we ventured back down the street to the main attraction – the Kronosaurus Korner – complete with life-size Kronosaur out on the front lawn – amazing and scary! Richmond was once right in the middle of the Eromanga Sea which stretched from the Gulf of Carpentaria down to the Great Australian Bight – effectively dividing what we now call Australia, in half. As a result, it has become one of the most proliferative areas of complete and partial dinosaur finds in the world. Back in the 60’s a Kronosaur was uncovered and over the past 10 years one lucky farmer has found two near complete fossilized remains of a plesiosaur and pliosaur (marine dinosaurs) on his property. The Kronosaur is touted to be larger than the T-Rex and “would have had him for breakfast” our recorded tour guide proclaimed. It was the top of the food chain in this sea and would have feasted on whatever he/she could hunt down. The collection here is utterly amazing and kept us spell-bound as we wandered to each exhibit and learnt about the different finds and dinosaurs. Before heading back to camp we decided to have a go at fossicking for fossils at one of the designated areas the town has organized. There were literally thousands of fossilized shells and organic debris in the area and we each found a prized specimen to take back and chisel away at over the next couple of weeks. Our dinosaur trail at an end we trekked back to Hughenden and began to get organized for our next stop – Townsville.