June 26^th

Sunday morning in Winton was quite a buzz as The Vision Splendid Outback Film Festival is currently on for this week. We wandered along the street with all the visitors and enjoyed a cup of coffee, an Opal shop and then went in to see the Winton Outdoor Theatre. This was first opened in 1918. Typically it had canvas deck chairs and some colourful more erect chairs.

Boulia Outdoor Theatre

We set out along the road to Boulia on a bitumen road through very flat country. We had planned to go to Boulia from Windorah but because of floods and mud we had to follow the bitumen to Longreach and Winton and now towards Boulia from a North-west direction. It is a very long detour. It has been an interesting drive through the Channel Country with some really beautiful hill country with pretty streams, rocky outcrops and lovely bush. We have camped by Opal Creek this evening.

Opal Creek

Banjo Patterson brought many of the Channel Country rivers alive through his poetry. A 1.3 million-square-kilometre region of south western Queensland is known as the

‘Channel Country’ The name is derived from the network of river beds and streams coursing through the relatively flat terrain. Channel Country is renowned for the braided channels and flood plains of the Georgina, Burke, Mulligan, Wills, Hamilton, Diamantina, Thomson, and Barcoo Rivers that become Eyre Creek and Cooper Creek further South.