Narelle worked for the full five days on a neck vertebra from “Wade” measuring about 25cm X 30cm. She did manage to find and almost clean out the spinal cord hole in the vertebra as well as get rid of a lot of excess rock around the outside.
I started out with a similar sized piece with many large pieces of bone embedded in the rock. After 1.5 days it was decided we were not able to separate or identify any of the major parts and I cleaned up the rougher parts before giving it best.
I was then given a new piece to work on and in the remaining 3.5 days managed to make some inroads into one side of the rock. It is also believed to be a vertebra bone as it was joined to Narelle’s bone when it was found.
We worked from 8.30am till 6.00pm each day with two hours off for morning and afternoon teas and lunch. The work was very interesting and time galloped by very quickly. To know that sometime in the future the whole dinosaur will eventually be constructed and we did our bit is pretty mind-boggling.
Our caravan spent the week parked in (yes - in) the woolshed that has amenities alongside and we had about 25 kangaroos resident at the waterhole close by.
The weather was very hot days (38/9 degrees) but cooled down at night. The prep-shed was cooled with a giant water cooler and quite bearable to work in.
We also visited the excavation sites of “Elliot” and the plant fossil dig, having been to the “Wade” site last year. It really was a great way to spend a week, quite therapeutic and I can thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested.
As Foundation Members of Australian Age of Dinosaurs Inc. we intend to go back to do more of this interesting work. We are also aware of more exciting news of other discoveries that will be announced in the New Year.
We were sad to leave “Belmont” at the end of our week, and wandered back to Winton to book into the caravan park for a couple of days. After lunch on Saturday we made the trip 13kms out the Longreach road then 11kms into the bush to visit the new home of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs.
They have been gifted about 4,000 acres, including a mesa where it is intended to build a new museum, with a prep. shed and two dwellings to be erected next year. The mesa is 80m above the surrounding plain, the road in has been constructed and work is about to commence on the prep shed and cottages. It is exciting. Can’t someone find some 90 million year old dinosaur bones around Guyra?
We left Winton on Monday and journeyed as far as Tambo for the night. Took a detour from the usual route by turning off at Ilfracombe to head south to Isisford (lunch on the banks of the Barcoo) then east to Blackall. The road was narrow but little traffic made it an enjoyable detour. We saw some wildlife on the way- bustards, emus with half-grown chicks, and 2 wedge-tailed eagles drinking at a waterhole.
Tuesday we headed south through Augathella, Morven and on to Mitchell. South again to St. George for refuelling, then Mungindi (finally back to NSW) then Garah and our Delungra friends’ property, “Homedale” for the night.
“Homedale” is the property that I visited for harvest during 17 of the past 20 years. They had harvested the barley, average 22 bags, and were wandering around trying to find ripe wheat, had stripped about 25 tonnes but the weather was threatening.
Wednesday we toured around the property before heading home to Guyra and thus the end of our trip. It was great to see the lush green grass around Guyra as we had become very used to the dust and sand of the northern/western areas of Australia. We hope you found the articles interesting.
Some statistics: In 33.5 weeks we travelled 22,067kms @ 7.45kpl or 13.4 litres per 100kms at a total cost of $5,210, averaging $1.76 per litre. Dearest fuel purchased was $2.10cpl at Smith Lagoon (near 80 Mile Beach), cheapest $1.47cpl at Longreach. We will have the intercooler problem checked out in the hope of improving the fuel consumption for next year’s trip.
‘the travellers’
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