Winton's entrenchment as this pioneering region's business hub was secured only by a quirk of fate, as William Henry Corfield's written record makes clear.

[16] Corfield made it clear where he meant to settle: Our destination was Collingwood, more widely known as the Conn Waterhole, where the Government Surveyor had laid out a township situated about 40 miles [64 km] west of Winton.

[14] Another man of Corfield's acquaintance, named Thomas Lynett, had left Townsville for the same destination with backing from Burns, Philp and Co. to set up a shop at Collingwood, if he deemed the newly laid out town to be suitable upon his inspection.

The rowdies threatened to take the grog in the store, and as there were no police nearer than Aramac, I deemed it best to dispose of all the liquor to Allen, the local publican, who jumped at the chance to obtain a supply.

[14] He also described another problem – drug abuse: When I returned Winton was entirely out of liquor, and Allen did a great business in selling bottles of painkiller as a substitute.

On the Sunday while he was in town, he held a church service in the billiard room at the hotel, after a blue blanket had been thrown over the pool table and a red one had been draped over the cue rack.

This would have struck most at the time as a great boon, but in William Corfield's wry assessment of Winton's progress: "Now that we had two banks, four hotels, a chemist, saddler, besides other branches of industry, we felt that we were being drawn perilously within the influences of civilisation and its drawbacks.

[28] Pugh’s Queensland Almanac, Law Calendar, Directory, and Coast Guide for 1885 listed Winton's local professionals, including Julius von Berger, who was now joined by another pharmacist named A. Hurworth.

T. B. Feltham had two mentions in the almanac for being both the bookseller-stationer and the tobacconist, and likewise founding townsman Thomas Lynett was listed twice for being both a shopkeeper and the innkeeper at the Royal Mail Hotel.

By 1890, its services were still being held in an all-purpose hall whose owner, William Steele, had the licence for it revoked that year, which was understandably an unwelcome hardship for the town's Anglicans.

The same article mentioned that founding townsman Thomas Lynett had had to pay a fine of £1, along with 9s in costs (after having been summoned before the Police Magistrate), for a breach of the Licensing Act.

More seriously, even though there was no real loss, was this incident, mentioned in the same report: Somebody amused himself at the expense of the senior-constable of police, telling him that the shearers and all union men would rush the town.

One of the "momentous decisions by the Federated Pastoralists" (the management side in the strike) on 18 March 1891 was to declare a great number of stations in the Winton area "non-union", including Elderslie west of town, and also Ayrshire Downs on Wokingham Creek, Dagworth on the Diamantina River, Warnambool Downs south-southwest of town and Llanrheidol north of Middleton, about 150 km west of Winton.

[36] Later, on nearby Elderslie Station, which belonged to absentee landlord Sir Samuel Wilson at the time, the woolshed was burnt down on 8 October that year.

Mr. Cramieri is mentioned alongside Julius von Berger (who apparently took an interest in palaeontology when he was not working as a pharmacist) as a contributor of fossils whose provenance Jack and Etheridge wished to acknowledge.

[61] On Sunday 16 August 1914, Winton's townsfolk met at the Shire Hall to form a patriotic committee to recruit volunteers for the military to go and fight in the First World War, which had broken out less than three weeks earlier.

The town's chamber of commerce was ready with a deputation, who wished to discuss "health, railway communication links, and the export of stud sheep" with the Prime Minister, thus reflecting the day's issues of local concern.

[71] On 27 February 1928, a famous Australian pioneer aviator, Bert Hinkler, touched down at Winton on his way from Camooweal to Longreach; he also made intermediate stops at Cloncurry and McKinlay.

A meeting of the local branch of the Graziers' Association of Central and Northern Queensland in 1938 wanted to make known to the general public that for roughly a decade by that time, the revenue brought on the market by wool was outstripped by the production cost, thus incurring loss.

A Colonel Hoad delivered a speech in June on the proposal at the Shire Hall before "a big crowd of young men", asking them to join up to show their support for the Western Battalion.

This was an uncommon event in itself, especially during the Second World War, but it was made all the more so because he and a number of American military personnel – including two generals – had just survived an emergency landing of The Swoose at Carisbrooke Station, about 85 km southwest of Winton, and also because the Congressman happened to be Lyndon B. Johnson, who was later to become President of the United States.

[99] The town was seeking to provide other, more public amenities in the late 1940s and early 1950s as well, including a £100,000 sewerage scheme and a cooling tower for the artesian bore water, which came out of the ground quite hot.

Prime Minister Paul Keating and Queensland Premier Wayne Goss showed up for the festivities, and among other things, they unveiled a statue of Banjo Paterson.

In March 2015, Geoscience Australia reported that the river's course at and near its headwaters flows along the edge of a roughly circular crustal anomaly that might well be an impact structure.

It is an area, as described by Richard Blewett, a senior official with Geoscience Australia, 130 kilometres (81 mi) in diameter, characterized by geomagnetic anomalies, and Winton lies roughly 60 km beyond its eastern edge.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that recent seismic studies undertaken there indicated that long ago an asteroid or comet struck the area releasing energy equivalent to 650 million Hiroshima A-bombs (and thus roughly 41 zettajoules).

[122] As of 2018, Winton Shire Council is developing a geothermal power plant to replacing the water cooling process with one that converts the released heat into electricity.

Since the festival's inception, Roy Billing, Ivan Sen, Margaret Pomeranz, Butch Lenton, Steve Le Marquand and David Gulpilil have all received stars.

Winton is intimately involved in the story of the popular Australian folk song, "Waltzing Matilda", which had its first performance in the North Gregory Hotel in the town.

Cemented contents of the wall include rusted lawnmower parts, boat propellers, vintage typewriters and sewing machines and even a couple of complete motorbikes.