If you had to choose one word to describe Queensland’s Outback is would have to be… BIG!
We’re talking big skies… big scenery… and big attractions.
And they don’t come much bigger than the newest stars of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs near Winton.
Australian Age of Dinosaurs is a world-class natural history museum and an outstanding tourism attraction set high on a ‘jump up’ in Outback Queensland.
Life-sized replicas of two giant Sauropods – or long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs – greet visitors to the March of the Titanosaurs exhibit … a custom-built, climate-controlled building that houses a 54-metre long fossilized trackway of dinosaur footprints dating back to more than 90 million years ago.
The trackway was discovered on a remote Winton property and painstakingly recovered and relocated, piece by piece, to the AAOD over 3 years.
Embedded in the trackway are the marks of multiple creatures – from smaller dinosaurs to mighty Sauropods, including what may have been a mother and juvenile walking side by side.
Not far from the March of the Titanosaurs is another addition to the AAOD’s array of attractions – the Gondwana Stars Observatory, designed to resemble a meteorite impact.
Winton is Australia’s first International Dark Sky Sanctuary – and the observatory makes the most of that fact with guided astronomical ‘tours’ through the Outback night skies.
Guests can ‘peer into the past’ via the naked eye and powerful telescopes, in Australia’s only open-topped observatory.
Why not stay a little longer in Winton? You’ll discover why this dot on the map has earned the title of Queensland’s Tiny Tourism Town for 2022.
Pay your respects to A.B. Paterson at the Waltzing Matilda Museum, then waltz on over to the ‘Queen of the Outback’, the North Gregory Hotel – where Banjo first performed his little ditty about a jolly swagman.
Put your boots up for a couple of nights at the NGH and enjoy a classy Art Deco vibe; clean and comfortable accommodation; and classic Outback hospitality.
