and back

BY THOMAS E KING

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello and Gary Cooper and Bette Davis ... these never-to-beforgotten actors of yesteryear’s silver screen continue to play to audiences on select nights at the celebrated Royal Theatre in downtown Winton, Queensland. With a population of 900, Winton, in the far west of the state, is neither a film capital of note nor a cultural Mecca of consequence. Visitors, therefore, need the promise of other pursuits to persuade them to defy the tyranny of distance and venture nearly 1400 km northwest of Brisbane to this oasis in the outback, at the very heart of the Australian continent.

Flecked with red sands, rocky outcrops and Spinifex waving in the breeze, and specked with sheltered Aboriginal art sites and awe inspiring landscapes, the vast arid interior of central Australia is typified by starkness, solitude, splendour and a billion stars twinkling over the occasional isolated settlement; Winton is one of these.

Stars on screen

Studded with sparkling ‘jewels’, the inky black night sky of the limitless outback is the nomaintenance-required ‘roof’ hovering above the old Royal Theatre. Surrounded by just four walls, this is an open air cinema hallone of only two such venues still operating in Australia today - where patrons can sit in canvas chair comfort while reliving the golden days of celluloid on cool Wednesday evenings.

Since 1918, the few residents of Winton - there have never been many - and visitors chancing upon this outpost in the outback have been able to relax at the Royal. Until 1927 when electricity came to town, the projector was cranked by hand. That was also the year when the first sound film, The Jazz Singer, also became the talk of the tiny town.

While Winton is considered to be the home of Australian bush poetry and is the host for the annual Bronze Swagman Award, it’s still the old Royal that pulls in the crowd to see vintage cinema from another time and place. As large as the screen is at Winton’s sole picture palace, it pales into insignificance when compared to a spectacular ‘stage’ nearby where a real life drama occurred long before any swagman waltzed across the outback.

Dinosaur discovery

The place is the Lark Quarry Conservation Park, 110 km southwest of Winton, and the time, well just set the clock back 95 million or so years. During the Cretaceous Period this now-parched and rocky area of central Australia was a muddy lake surrounded by temperate rainforest and a menagerie of wild creatures.

Dinosaurs roamed the land, I learned, while traipsing across sand and stones at one of the most unusual sites in the country, the only place where there’s recorded evidence of a dinosaur stampede! The action could not, of course, have been captured on film but it has been well-documented as fossils tell the story in stone. Scientists surmise it was a giant flesh-eating Carnosaur that stalked a hapless victim. As it pursued its prey, up to 200 chicken-sized Coelurosaurs and herbivorous Ornithopods feeding at the edge of the prehistoric lake also fled in panic.

The mud over which they ran was dry enough to retain their hundreds of footprints. Sand and silt later filled in the depressions and ever so slowly the tracks were compressed into rock. As millennia passed the climate changed and so did the typography of the land. The lake was uplifted to form a low mountain range rising above a now waterless plain. Over the eons the ridge eroded leaving only a few isolated hills. In the 1960s fossilised tracks were discovered in an exposed hillside by the manager of one of the area’s extensive grazing properties.

Excavations began in the mid 1970s with the site now under the protection of the Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service. Take note! While visitors are encouraged, there is little out here beyond an ecologically sustainable conservation building that protects the tracks from the ravages of weather … and visitors. It’s wise to bring drinking water as well as a sense of adventure.

Life at Longreach

In contrast, I discovered that there’s no shortage of visitor comforts back in Longreach at its most recognised tourist

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