The original settlement of Winton (about 1.5 km out if current town) was named "Pelican Waterhole". After it was flooded in 1876, one of the stores shifted to the current location of Winton and the town ship eventually settled on this site.
They have created a replica of the waterhole in the main street of town.
As with most of the towns we are travelling through in the outback - the water supply comes from bores plumbed from the Great Artesian Basin.
The Winton shire has one of the hottest artesian bores in Australia - it is over 1.3 km deep with a temperature of 99 degrees C. The water is considered to be very pure - BUT boy does it stink - as it it rich in minerals and hydrogen sulphide gas comes with the water.
Today we spent wandering around some of the sites of the town of Winton.
The Waltzing Matilda Centre was first on the list and we spent about 2.5 hrs here perusing the many sections of this facility.
We really enjoyed it - as this is a really interesting centre comprising an Outback Regional Art Gallery, the Qantilda Museum - which depicts Winton history & "Home of the Legends" room. It also has many collections of artefacts related to the history of Winton - including vehicles, machinery, old cameras, medical equipment and much more. It was all very well presented and very interesting.
Then off to the North Gregory Hotel for a "yummy" pub lunch.
Winton is known as the home of Waltzing Matilda and is famed as the place where A B (Banjo) Patterson wrote this song whilst visiting friends at Dagworth Station.
Legend has it that the first public performance of the song took place at the North Gregory Hotel - in 1895.
This hotel was first built in 1879 and has been rebuilt some 4x times - having been demolished and rebuilt in 1900, it was burnt down in 1915 and again in 1946. The current brick building was built in 1955. Seems a lot of the old pubs out here were destroyed by fire - interesting.
There is a park and wall - "Arno's Wall" - at the back of the this pub.
The wall extends for over 70 metres and constructed from concrete and rock bought in from Arno's opal mine at Opalton and is studded with old lawnmower parts, boat propellers, old machinery from businesses in Winton, vintage typewriters, even a couple of complete motorbikes. It even has the kitchen sink.
I have attached some photos here of this wall:
We also discovered that you can camp in the car park out back of this hotel for $1 a night and use the facilities at the pub. Damm that we did not find this out earlier!!!- as we had already paid to stay at the caravan park which was pretty basic for the price.
Next we toured the Old Royal Open Air Theatre - which is a working historic museum with an open air cinema - unfortunately the cinema opens only Wednesdays evenings so we will have to miss out this time round on the evening Nostalgia program that they offer.
It also doubled as the local skating rink in times past.
Then on to the Corfield & Fitzmaurice Heritage listed building - a preserved old style general store.
It sells local arts and crafts and also houses an exhibition of opal mining in the area as well as a General Store Heritage display and history of sheep farming and wool industry in the area.
What is termed "Boulder opal" is common in this area.
The price of diesel is starting to improve again - $1.51 here in Winton.
Late afternoon we took ourselves back to the North Gregory for a drink and to a performance by a woman - Helen. The main part of the show was a history of the song Waltzing Matilda and performance of the various versions of the song.
It seems that the melody has origins from an old Scottish tune and it was heard by a school friend of Banjo Patterson and played to him whilst staying with friends on a property near Winton. At the same time he was taken around the area and was hearing many stories of swagmen in the area and of some drownings in waterholes that had occurred. He really loved the tune and penned the words to Waltzing Matilda about this time to the melody of this Scottish tune.
This original version has been changed a couple of times - with the tune being made more upbeat when it was used for the marketing of "Billy Tea" - and the words also changed slightly for this version.
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