21/8/2012
Winton A Day trip to Carisbrooke station and Lark Quarry Dinosaur Footprints with Carisbrooke tours run by Charlie.
Charlie has to be one of the most knowledgeable people in this area . He told us a lot about the stations, the history, the trees and plants, the birds and the wildlife. We drove 330kms, mostly on dirt roads that we would never have ventured onto.

We must have stopped 25 times to look at the wonderful views, including a breathtaking gorge, the three sister rock formation - Maud, Mary and Kate, the Dragons Back and even an eagles nest in a tree that clung to the edge of a cliff giving us the often unseen top view of the nest.

Morning tea Smoko was at an opal mine, time to fossick for boulder opal while the billy boiled.
Lunch was In a delightful location under a ghost gum with upturned tins for stools, Charlie brought out the cushions for our comfort and laid out a delightful cold meats and salad lunch with blood oranges and brownies to follow.

After lunch we headed to Lark Quarry to see the only dinosaur stampede footprints in the world, small chicken size prints and huge dinosaur prints show that tiny dinosaurs were being chased by a meat eating dinosaur that could have been "Banjo", who we learnt yesterday, was the only meat eating dinosaur whose bones have been found in these parts, and his foot bones fit exactly into the footprints found here .

The Lark Quarry tour is at set times. Afternoon tea was at Carisbrooke homestead where Penny, Charlie's daughter in law, put on a great home made afternoon tea spread on the verandah.
We were picked up at 8am and dropped back about 6:30pm, so Charlie certainly knows how to take his guests on a lovely long variety packed day, $138 for seniors. Our fellow travelers were a party of 6, 4 French tourists being shown around by friends from Brisbane.

We decided to get fish and chips takeaway for supper, from the Tattersalls hotel. Tony L and Sue went down to organize it and have a beer while they waited, they got chatting to a truckie passing through with a load of Dongas bound for WA from BRISBANE (a 2 week round trip!!) they finally arrived back to the Caravan Park with the best feed of Barramundi and chips money can buy.

The Map is marked Opalton - because Lark Quarry is not in travelpod - we didn't go to Opalton.