Waltzing Winton

Big and little footprints at Lark Quarry

Emu family

Landscape around Lark Quarry (imagine it's 37 degrees)

Nick and Conor are all better and now I’ve got the cold – but at least I know it won’t last long, Daniel is the only one holding out! Super strong immunity.

We’ve made it to Winton today and even though we’re still heading South, it’s just getting hotter! The car thermometer says 37 degrees outside as I write (although I admit it often exaggerates a little bit) which was a crazy time to go out for a walk but since we’d driven 110k out to the Lark Quarry dinosaur footprint site, we felt like we should. It was only a short walk and I don’t think I was paying quite as much attention as I could have been but we all enjoyed the tour inside to see the actual footprints. 95 million years ago there was a lake here and it was much wetter (2m of rain per year) and there were two types of dinosaurs which were probably having a drink at the lake – one type which were the size of chickens (Coelurosaurs), and one type which were the size of cassowaries (about 1.8m, Ornithopods). Then a big carnivorous dinosaur (Carnosaur), a couple of metres tall, stalking them, they panicked and stampeded, and he (it) chased them. It’s quite amazing how much palaeontologists can tell just from the footprints – our guide pointed out how the large dinosaur walked along, pivoted on one foot then stopped in another place, and how some of the smaller ones were running along and actually ran into each other, skidding in one spot, or where the cassowary sized ones started just walking and then took bigger strides trying to get away. There were also juvenile sized footprints for each of the smaller dinosaurs, obviously running along next to parents.

These footprints and what they show about how dinosaurs walked or ran were apparently used when making the movie Jurassic Park to make a stampede scene as real as possible. The guide pointed out that the movie had ‘got one thing right’ when they made the big carnivorous dinosaur walk or run along almost horizontal to the ground with its head right down and tail acting as a counter balance swaying from side to side.

On the way to and from the quarry we saw the first emus that we’ve seen in a long time, and better yet, there were two different groups with emu babies – all stripey and very cute. We also fitted in the Waltzing Matilda museum today which wasn’t too bad – it has potential to be super schmaltzy but it was interesting to know how and when the song was written (by Banjo Patterson on a property near Winton), and to hear lots of different versions of it, including a perky one in Swedish, one in Pidgin English and a rock ‘n roll version which the kids thought was hilarious.