From Charters towers to Richmond
first stop 90km from Charters Towers at Campaspe River camp rest area ,only one other lot of travellers there.
Next day we travel through Pentland pop. 250. Torrens creek pop. 20, Praire pop. 50 and on to Hughenden pop. 1200.

Hughenden is part of the dinosaur trail with Richmond and Winton. We stopped at Winton on the way up to the very north of QLD.

There is a life size replica of a Mattaburrasaurus. The skeleton was found in this area and is kept in the museum , information centre.. Its name is Hughie and the replicas name is Mutt. 
 
 

 The museum is full of dinosaur bones found in this area. Over 3000 fossil specimens from the Cretaceous period are housed here, including marine reptiles, mattaburrasaurus, Hughenden sauropod, Queensland Pterosaurs and a good selection of shells , molluscs and fish.
The first discovery was of an Ichthysour in 1865.
There is a place where squid like creatures of millions of years ago are still found, and you can go fossicking, so we did, go fossicking that is , in the hot sun in a creek bed with a pick and hammer, and found nothing.

We then spent a day and night in Porcupine Gorge National park.
We left the van and spent the night in the roof top tent. The gorge was carved by the porcupine creek , which you can swim in for part of the year. You don't swim when the creek is in full flow during the wet season, as it flows a bit too fast. The only trouble is when it is dry the creek is right down at the bottom of the gorge. 1.1km down. The walk down the steep twisting path shows all the different layers of rocks and their colours., but by the time you are at the bottom you are ready for a swim and there is not much water and it is only flowing slowly so parts are green. We found a deeper bit that was moving and cooled off. Then the climb back up and no cooling swim at the top just a cold bucket of water to pour over yourself.


This camp area only has composting toilets and none drinking water.
We had dinner and were about to have cold bucket shower after our cup of tea when we had visitors. Cute little Rufus Bettong came hopping in and drinking from my shower bucket. So we spent about an hour watching them.and trying to take photos in the dark.
 
  

 
Back in Hughenden we walked their Eco walk alongside the Flinders river, this would have been a nice walk after rain and with water in the river. The Flinders river is Queensland’s longest river which extends 840 km and flows into the Gulf of Carpentaria.
There is a lot of sculptures all over the parks, shop fronts and middle of the main road through town.These dinosaur fish in photo are made from washers , pretty good.


The last night here we went up to the lookout at Mt. Walker at sunset. The council have set up lookouts facing for sunrise and sunset, but they provide 360deg views. We were able to drive all the way to the top ,which was good ,as this is one of the more steep ascents to the lookouts we have found.The sunset was pretty good.
 
Richmond was next. Population not many ?
This place is half way between Townsville and Mt. Isa, where we are heading slowly.
Summer temperature of average 32.8 but it still spring and we have 38-40deg

The dinosaur museum here is dedicated to marine reptiles, and there are places close by for us to go fossicking . The two places we can go without a licence are 10km out of town. This area was part of the inland sea, and what you can find are shells of clams and parts of fish, like scales and teeth of an armoured fish, Richmondichthys, and fossils of smaller fish.This time we went early in the morning , it was still about 27deg. We did find rocks with shell parts in them and some limestone rocks covered in winding , branching ridges which are or were the burrows of ancient worms or crustaceans on the sea floor. The rock was deposited on the sea floor some 100 million years ago when this part of Australia was covered by the inland sea. So the couple of pieces we have are 100million years old. Hows that.

Enough of dinosaurs for a couple of days , right beside the caravan park is Lake Fred Tritton. Named after the mayor at the time of the Lake construction from waste land. Opened 2004 with a walking rack of 1.2 km around it. Depth average 4.5 m with the deepest part of 8mt., water capacity of approximately 314mega litres. This lake is stocked with 18 species of fish so is used for fishing, all water sports and swimming with a kids water park at one end.
We went snorkelling around it and could not see too much as it was a bit murky, but we did get to cool of. The swimming pool across from the caravan park only opens for a few hours aday.
 
Between the lake and caravan park is a bush tucker garden, with all plants being native to the area and have labels of names and traditional uses.

We walk around all the historic buildings and collections of memorabilia and of course swim in the pool each day when it is open and walk around the lake taking bird photos.