My wife solved the impasse neatly. Queensland Rail's long haul train The Spirit of the Outback had motor rail. We wouldn't drive the truck - we'd tow it.

Destination Dinosaur commenced at 6.30pm with The Spirit silently slipping her moorings at The Brisbane Transit Centre. We were to be cocooned in our silver time machine's journey into the oldest country on the planet for the next twenty-four hours.

Loading the truck was simplicity itself. A couple of QR blokes wander up, say gudday, swap bits of paper and that's it.

Within an hour we were ordering dinner in the tucker box restaurant and watching the neon lit suburbia of Brisbane's Northside flash past.

QR has a justifiable reputation for its cuisine. The menu is limited, as is its wine list is short but easily surpasses airline food and truck stop café's, our alternative had we driven.

Through out the night we were tugged north to Rockhampton then to turn hard left for Longreach early next morning.

"Are we there yet Dad"? mumbled Ceda from beneath her rumpled and itchy blanket.

"Are there any McDonalds in Longreach Dad? yawned Luka. I wondered how to break the news gently.

Midmorning and our first major stop at Emerald Station. Gone was the smooth welded mainline northern track. We lurched along a track first laid in 1892, and held in place by bolts, spikes and plates.

The Spirit comes comfortably equipped. The Stockman's bar car, furnished with armchairs and sofas. The Tuckerbox Restaurant takes its name from the box of food or “Tucker” that itinerant stockmen and drovers toted while moving stock about the vast grasslands.

Printed histories of intrepid pioneers and their sheep or cattle stations decorate the public cars. The Captain Starlight Lounge provides lighter snacks and beverages. It’s monikered after the legendary cattle “duffer” Harry Redford, known to his admirers and the law as “Captain Starlight”.

Even the food reflects the bush’s heroic characters. I munched on a Jackie Howe lamb cutlet and cogitated upon the man. Jackie Howe, a circus acrobat turned stockman, passed into Australian legend by shearing 321 sheep in a day, a feat made doubly impressive by using hand shears.

Jackie also instigated something of an Australian workers fashion statement. No self-respecting shearer would be seen dead without his Jacky Howe dark blue sweat stained singlet.

After a post-lunch digestif, I peered sleepily out of the panoramic window and watched the colours of the endless plains subtly changing from a hard sunbleached white Savannah into golden hues as the sun settled on the western horizon.

The girls settled into a rhythm of cards, board games and not infrequent trips to the Stockman’s Car for ‘treats’. So far so good. Ceda spent hours on the lookout for emus, currently her favourite critter.

After lunch the crew darkened the carriage and showed movies. Whilst the grownups snoozed the kids had the impromptu theatre to themselves.

The last stop before Longreach is Barcaldine. Another town drenched in Australian history.

Here, in 1891, the great shearers’ strike began. The shearers demanded better pay and conditions but the Squatters balked.

The situation became ugly and Australian fought Australian. Eventually under a certain Acacia tree on Barcaldine’s main street the Australian Workers Party was formed. Today we know it as the ALP. The tree still stands alive (just) and is respectfully treasured. They call it the Tree of Knowledge. The Spirit hissed to a halt opposite for a few minutes. We gave the veteran tree a pat.

The Spirit crept into Longreach commendably on time. A stroll down the platform to the ramp and there was the truck unclamped and ready to roll.

The Commercial Hotel (our base) was conveniently nearby. The barbie was fired up for the Commercials ritualistic Sunday night feast. The locals and other travellers were hoeing into steaks the size of hubcaps.

Publican Roly Gooding issued us brief instructions. “Righto”, he drawled, “just grab yourselves a plate and get stuck in”.

Whilst the succulent steak juice dribbled down my chin washed down with a perfectly chilled beverage, Lou and I pondered upon how easy the whole trip had been so far. I hadn’t hit anything living or dead. Hadn’t had a flat or a burst hose. Hadn’t been booked. The windscreen remained intact. We hadn’t been harassed by bored kids or run down by a triple road train. We’d saved a heap in fuel and hadn’t arrived knackered.

We rose with the sun and headed the 200kms North for Winton where 95 million years ago (give or take a day or two) an everyday scenario was being played out.

Then, the oldest real estate on Earth was a lush, jungle and inland sea. The geological history of the area spans some 2 billion years.

One peckish 8m long Theropod in search of a light snack found a herd of much smaller creatures, ornithopods and coelurosaurs enjoying a cool drink.

The little guys roughly the size of chooks and emus trapped by the water hole, wisely bolted and caused a stampede outrunning the dimwitted aggressor leaving 3,300 footprints impregnated in the primordial ooze.

Heavy rains flooded the lake and covered the imprints forever with a prehistoric kind of Polyfila effectively sealing that brief little interlude for eternity.

As with many great discoveries the footprints were unearthed by chance by a local grazier who attacked a small hill with an earthmover in search of opals. That was forty years ago. A pinprick in time.

He uncovered something infinitely more precious. The Worlds only known evidence of a dinosaur stampede lay before him.

Palaeontologists were gobsmacked. The trackways cover an area roughly the size of a tennis court and are covered with a two and a half million-dollar complex to protect the fossilised footprints from the elements and vandals. The Queensland Heritage Trails Network provided funds for the complex.

We swooped down into the valley and met Bill Wilkinson, curator and guide. After a cuppa Bill idly mentioned that if they looked hard enough the girls would undoubtedly find fossils. My kids, inveterate scavengers, needed no second invitation.
The same sun that once shone over pre history began its decent into the distant horizon creating the awesome colours that typify the Outback. I was reminded of a red-hot interior of a traditional earthen pizza oven.

As the afterglow replaced the vanishing sun Bill took us on a fossil hunt amongst the conical volcanic plugs that typify the country.

The only green vegetation was the ubiquitous and needle sharp spinifex and a scattering of stubborn eucalypts.

The remainder of the country looked like it had been nuked.

We wandered around the base of a series of rocky escarpments and discovered an abandoned Aboriginal chalk mine.

Burrowing into the powdery ochre success was quick. With a whoop Ceda re appeared clutching a dinner plate sized slab of sandstone impregnated with the tiny tracks of pre historic worms. The next major contact, a fossilised tree branch. Two heavy spherical rocks - the size of cricket balls - mystified us all. Strange conical objects soon followed by the handful along with perfectly oval ‘dinosaurs eggs’ and crustaceans. A veritable treasure trove from the unimaginable past.

We followed the rickety rabbit proof fence still in search of bones bought to the surface from washed out creeks until the light closed in and pure silence overwhelmed us. Truly a fabulous place.

Bill is intimate with the mysteries of the equally ancient Milky Way (he’s spent enough time sleeping under it). Sotto voce he gave the girls a personalised tour of the visible universe. He’s also seen a few things up in the razor sharp Outback winter skies that he definitely can’t explain.

Next morning Bill gave us a tour of the exhibit. To date some 6000 folks have visited the site. A few, Bill explained with a wry grin, refuse to believe that the tracks are genuine.

“I just tell the non believers that if we were going to create a fake sight we’d had done it much closer to a pub!”

• Longreach
• Cattle Sale
• Carnarvon Gorge
• Homepage