As Museum Development Officers, every so often we get to jump on the road and head out to connect with some of our community partners. It means we can get a feel for the spaces where communities are living, working, and thriving and get to know the people who are making things happen in the regions. As the newest MDO in the team, I was lucky enough to head out through the beautiful western outback and spend a week exploring Winton and Longreach and all the quirky places in between.

Follow me on a highlights reel through the west – first stop, Winton.

The drive from Townsville to Winton is underrated – you pass through more well-known places such as Charters Towers and Hughenden, but also the sweet little spots along the way such as Prairie, where you can hopefully snag some vegies from their roadside stand.

Keep driving into the horizon and you eventually arrive in Winton: the birthplace of the iconic Waltzing Matilda song. Winton is the gateway to Australia’s Dinosaur Trail, and when they say it’s famous for its friendliness and big smiles, I’ll agree ten times over. Being welcomed into a community like Winton is a really uplifting feeling: everyone you meet out there wants you to know you’re welcome and wants to show you exactly how special the area is.

The Heritage Truck and Machinery Museum

For any trucks or machinery buffs, this museum is a must do. Picture multiple large sheds housing all number of trucks and vehicles, each one with their own unique story. My favourite was the truck driven by Thora Daphne “Toots” Holzheimer: Australia’s first female truckie. For three decades, Toots clocked up more than 1.6 million kilometres hauling freight across remote Queensland, traversing the dusty dirt roads across Cape York and along the inland roads out to Mount Isa. Old Girl, her trusty steed, is housed at the museum in Winton where visitors can also purchase her biography, Toot’s: Woman in a man’s world, written by one of Toots’ daughters Donna Vawdrey to preserve her mother’s legacy. Toots’ is remembered by many as a ‘hero of the Cape’.

The Royal Open-Air Theatre

Set in the heart of Winton’s main street, the Royal Open-Air Theatre is a unique cinematic experience. When you enter the building, you get an immediate glimpse of the incredible open-air theatre space out the back. Winton has some of the clearest night skies and sitting underneath the starry skies on a canvas seat in front of a theatre screen is unforgettable. Built in 1918, Winton’s theatre is one of two open-air theatres still operating in Australia. I met with Geraldine Coughlan while I was there, the daughter of Vince Evert, who bought the theatre in 1964 after the death of his father and is known as the ‘Father of Tourism’ in Western Queensland. Geraldine and the team of volunteers and family members managing the theatre are so passionate about the preservation and interpretation of the space – and it shows. If you make it to Winton on a Tuesday or Wednesday you can even experience the Nostalgia Nights held at the theatre and relive the experience of going to the movies during the 1960s. Just remember to pack your woollies!

Waltzing Matilda Centre

Walking through the Waltzing Matilda Centre, you can just feel the enormous efforts of the volunteers at the Winton and District Historical Society and all they went through to make the centre what it is today. Following the devastating fire of 2015, where significant items and parts of the original centre were damaged beyond repair, the new Centre showcases a range of incredible stories, objects and interpretive displays in both the new areas of the museum and the buildings which survived the fire years before. You can read more about the work that Queensland Museum MDO’s did in collaboration with the Historical Society and Winton Shire Council following the fire event on our blog.

Members of the Society are still working hard on interpreting more and more of their collections in the different display spaces and are keenly looking into some possibilities for digital preservation of research, images, and historical data for use into the future. Bruce and Helen from the society took me on a wonderful tour, which could have gone for 3 more hours than it did, given the breadth of stories and objects both on display and in storage.

Of course, you can’t go to Winton without also stopping off to play some tunes at the Musical Fence (where the bass line for Gotye’s Eyes Wide Open track was recorded) or visiting Australian Age of Dinosaurs.

Onwards to Longreach…stay tuned.