Day 37 (5th July, 2015): Into Winton to see "Mel & Susie on Tour"

Today we are heading south on the Landsborough Highway to Winton where we are planning to stay at the Matilda Caravan Park and go to see the nightly show they have there during the peak season.

Unfortunately this morning somewhere between Cloncurry and McKinlay we hit a large Kite. We had slowed for some road kill ahead as we usually do and watched for the birds to disperse - but unfortunately this Kite wheeled back and slammed into the bull bar. He nearly managed to miss us - but got caught on the far left of the bull bar just in front of the headlight.

We hoped it may drop off along the way Into McKinlay (there was nowhere for us to easily stop before that) - as we were not looking forward to having to prise is remains from the bull bar.

We pulled into McKInlay with it still attached but getting it off wasn't too bad.

We felt very sad for it - but we are lucky that we have not hit anything before this with the amount of kites and wedge tailed Eagles you see on the road kill out here. We were also pretty lucky it did not hit the windscreen.

With about 160km still to get us to Winton today we made a morning tea stop over at Kynuna Roadhouse (which is about the only thing at Kynuna) and found the people in the van parked next to us feeding a couple of Brolgas and their baby in the car parking across the road. 

The baby was very cute - about half the size of the adults and the mother was feeding it - putting bits of bread in its mouth.

Stupid me didn't get a photo - I think I must have been still traumatised from hitting the poor Kite!

We arrived in Winton and travelling down the Main Street we were shocked to see that the Waltzing Matilda Centre had burnt down. A fire went through this fantastic centre a few weeks back and it is now closed. 

We were very sad about this as it was an extremely well presented and interesting major tourism drawcard in Winton. We had spent a good few hours visiting this centre when we were here 2 years ago. 

The town is determined to rebuild it (hoping to have it rebuilt by the end of 2016) - and will be trying to rebuild their collection and start off again in a temporary location in the interim - they are apparently getting lots of offers of exhibit items and copies of documents from other museums to kick off their collection again.

The Matilda Caravan Park is quite a nice and popular caravan park - with lots of chooks, chickens, goats, a sheep and Banjo the Alpaca living there for visiting kids (that included us) to enjoy. 

We were set up here and enjoying lunch - giving us plenty of time to get a load of washing on and dried this afternoon.

We were looking forward to the show tonight - with "Mel and Susie" the resident bush poets here at the Matilda Caravan Park for the busy season. We had heard about this duo act the last time we visited Winton but did not get ourselves to see them.

The other interesting thing about today was the lovely Lyn that we were camped next to. She came out of her RV and sat with us in the afternoon sun and we learnt that she was we think just shy of 80yrs old, had been travelling solo in her camper for 18yrs and the camper was her home.

Her hometown was Newcastle and she has children living currently in Belmont North, Fern Bay & Wangi Wangi.

She is also a bush poet and as we sat there she told us some of her original works - which were very very good. She was also going to be performing a short work in the show tonight with Mel and Susie.

Lyn had kept us talking so long we had to rush ourselves to get showered and dinner over to be at the show for the 7pm start.

Well - what amazing talents these girls are!!! They combine bush poetry and comedy into a fantastically funny and very polished show. They are also both very good singers. 

We laughed and laughed so much all throughout their show and also enjoyed the slot that Lyn did.

They actually do a different show every night over a week - so they get campers coming back more than the one night.