12 May 2012 - Charleville, WWII and stargazing

We booked in to do a tag along tour of the airfield and base that was built by  the Americans in WWII. Not much remains of the base as the Americans destroyed most of it at the end of the war. Charleville was used as a base for the B17 Flying Fortress. They were far enough away from the coast to be out of range of any of the Japanese planes. It was very interesting and the guide was very passionate about what they had so far uncovered. They have a group of Uni of QLD archeology students arriving later in the year to try and uncover more artifacts and remains of buildings.

We played a few games in the afternoon with the kids including kicking the football as high as possible into the air and have them chase it. Unfortunately the ball landed on some of the  nasty outback prickles and had to be thrown out a few days later.

I was booked into a session at the Charleville Cosmos Centre at 7.30 to do some stargazing. The centre is very new and was one of 16 tourist attractions built in Western QLD with state and federal funding. The original plans were for a 'Waltzing Matilda' style museum. The locals however thought this was a little 'parse' and requested an astronomy centre instead. This is certainly a bit different and the session I went to was full. We looked at some dying stars, new stars, Saturn and Alpha Centauri. It was a worthwhile session but it would have been good to spend some more time on the telescopes.

11 May 2012 - Tambo Teddies and on to the Bilbies

After starting the day with a not-so-inspiring run we packed up and stopped off to visit the home of the Tamba Teddies before leaving town. With price tags of approx.. $90 for a small one, we didn’t purchase any additional travellers for the homeward run of our trip.

Without much on the road between the two towns we drove through, listening to kiddie music (as we do best) al the way. Having had a look at a few camping options, we decided to stay out of town, and chose to try out a “Station Stay” as our campsite for our few days here.  The station – Thurlo - is a 33,000 acre cattle station about 8km outside of town. As per usual, the bad behavior and screaming started as we turned in the gate of the park, and the peace of this beautiful spot was broken – not to return until we leave.

The campsite were fab and I loved their description of the sites as “marriage friendly”. How true I thought as I am not sure how many “disputes” we have had about where/how/which direction to park the damn camper on arrival at campsites. My idea is just “whack it in, get it up and don’t worry about the detail”, Nick takes the more “considered approach” and likes to think about it and get it right before we start. Anyway, not much to dispute here, it was easy.

Whilst there was an Aboriginal visiting the campsite to give a talk, show some of his art work and play a little didgeridoo in the arvo, we chose to head for town and give the kids 40winks en route. With the Bilby Experience that night we knew tired kids would be a disaster.

The campsite runs a campfire and happy hour every evening, but we skipped this too to head to hear about “Save the Bilby” campaign. We had a very interesting talk by National Parks and Wildlife and then went to see the 3 little critters (Mom, Day and Baby Baza) they had secured “out back”. Em was just fascinated with feral cats after seeing a photo of a dissection of a feral cats stomach which showed 2 bilbies, numerous mice and other wee creatures, all consumed in one night. The cat weighed in at 8kilos. I think this just may be her new obsession and true to form that’s all she talked about for the rest of the night.

Anyway, it was an incredibly inspiring evening about the difference a few people with passion can make, and left us questioning yet again why the hell we are returning to Sydney to sit in an office and make very little difference to the world other than lined some fat cats pocket. Hmm.

10 May 2012 - A Visit to the Tree of Knowledge, Barcaldine

Interesting that just as we get towards the end of our travels our packing and unpacking is getting a little more efficient. We packed up and left Longreach early, happy that we saw what there was to see here and thrilled with the free camping so close to town. We did wonder how any paying camping ground could make a good living here based on the crowds at the free camp area.

Our first stop of the day was Barcaldine for morning tea. Lachie proceeded to fall over my bag, twist his ankle and break the 2^nd pair of shoes in as many days. He decided his leg was “broken” and was unable to walk on it. Just another reason to get carried around like a baby.

We did a quick stop at Tourist information and then went to see the Tree of Knowledge – the birthplace of the Australian Labour Party. This tree was poisoned back in 2006 shortly after being deemed a national treasure, and now what remains is a rather impressive memorial, built around the dead remains of the tree for the meager sum of $5mAUD.

The kids gave it a good greenie style tree hug in the hope some of that knowledge rubs off on them, and then Lachie (with the broken leg) proceeded to do headstands around the tree, so not sure he really gleaned much from the experience.

Onward to Tambo(population 330), our stop for the night and to be honest neither of the two campsites in town  looked like much. We settled for one on the highway which cost $20, so expectations were rather low. However, for that we did get hospitable hosts and up close and personal with the road trains hammering down the highway at night all done up like Xmas trees – Lachie loved it.

We headed out in the evening when we had set up camp and did a quick walk around the local river called the Coolibah walk. The evening sun was beautiful, kangaroos a go go, and we even got to visit the site of a Qantas crash back in 1923 which I believe has been struck from the history books as I had always firmly believed Qantas had never been involved in a fatal plane crash – amazing what you find in the most remote of spots.

We walked back via the main street past the Tambo Teddy shop and to the horror of the kids and our delight, it was shut for the evening so we got to go home, have a glass of wine and cook amongst the bugs yet again. I seriously think we are getting more protein than we bargained for in our recent evening meals without the annex – roll on Charleville and hopefully some comfort again.

9 May 2012 - Longreach

We were not really interested in paying the admission prices to the Qantas museum and Stockmans Hall of Fame, the main tourist draw cards in Longreach and instead headed for the guided tour of the Longreach School of Distance Education. The school covers a massive area of QLD and it was very interesting to find out about how education works over such vast distances. The general comment from people on the tour who knew of people who had been through similar schools was that they were usually well ahead of students at similar age/grade levels in traditional schools.

After the tour we decided to get haircuts for Em and Lachie. It was mainly for Lachie's benefit as his hair was starting to go wild. Despite bribery of a packet of smarties, he went ballistic and the hairdresser did well to get some of it cut off.

Smarties in hand, we headed out to the town of Ilfracombe about 20 mins south east of Longreach as we had heard about the mile of machinery that lines the main street through town. We were not disappointed and the kiddies spent nearly 2 hours climbing on every tractor, truck, bulldozer, grader they could find. There were also several free museums along the way and once again an unexpected gem of our trip.

With exhausted kids we headed back to Longreach in time to get the car serviced. It was well overdue and we took advantage of having a Toyota dealer in town.

8 May 2012 - Winton to Longreach

Left Winton early in time to get to the Australian Age of Dinosaurs centre just outside Winton. The Age of Dinosaurs is a not for profit organisation established by David Elliot, a local grazier and one of the first people to find large dinosaur bones on his property whilst out mustering sheep. The centre is located on a fantastic spot on the edge of one of the jump ups just outside town with views out over the plains.

The new building with the latest bones was only opened a few weeks earlier on the Easter weekend 2012. The Age of Dinosaurs was established to ensure that dinosaur finds remain in the local area. Handing responsibility over to Government or the QLD museum would mean any finds could end up anywhere in the world.

We spent about 30 mins in the new centre and saw 3 large sets of dinosaur bones. One set from an Australovenator dinosaur, a raptor type theropod, similar to the velociraptor. The second from a Dimantinasaurus, a large sauropod similar to a brontosaurus. The last set was from a newly discovered species that is yet to be formally named. The talk was very interesting and it is great to see such interesting finds occurring in Australia.

We then visited the fossil preparation shed, where they have enough bones to keep them busy for the next 35 years! Preparing dinosaur bones is slow work. There is no shortage of people willing to assist, just a shortages of tool and kit required for the very fiddly work.

After our visit we jumped in the car and left dinosaur country behind on our way to Longreach. On reaching Longreach we headed to tourist information to look at camping options. Local council has set up a free camping area next to the Thompson River just north of town. No power nor showers but you can never argue with free so we headed up there and it turned out to be a very pleasant spot. A walk over the bridge, playing poo sticks, watching the fisherman and looking at trains was a great way to finish the day.

7 May 2012 - Lark Quarry

Today we set out to visit Lark Quarry, the footprints in the rock that tell the story of a dinosaur stampede. Although the site is 110km from Winton, it is well worth a visit. The footprints are very distinct and well able to tell the story of the small dinosaurs fleeing their larger cousin.

The centre is well set out and after visiting the footprints, we walked around some of the walking trails and did some fossicking. I found one rock that looks a high potential of being a footprint 'positive' so we will hang onto that one.

After lunch we headed back toward Winton via the Nareen Jump Up, a lookout across the plains. Up Jump is the term for the larger hills in the area which have survived the weathering processes of the last few million years. The land in this area was originally 200m or so higher than present and the hills or Up Jumps depict the original level. At the bottom of the Up Jump, we did some fossicking for opal but only managed to find some more fossils instead.

Back at Winton we visited Arnos wall, a wall of 'stuff', from car wheels to microwaves, cemented into the wall around the house of a local eccentric. Interesting concept but probably not everyone's cup of tea.

6 May 2012 - Richmond to Winton

Time to pack up from Richmond and get to Winton as we had originally planned 3 days ago. We squeezed in our last Fossil Fest event by visiting the Show and Shine vintage car display and grabbing a bacon and egg sandwich down at Fred Tritton Lake.

The trip took roughly 4 hours and we got to Winton mid afternoon. After setting up without the annex, always a quicker set up, we visited the Musical Fence and the original Qantas Airfield. Prior to relocating to Longreach, Qantas first started flying planes to Darwin and Brisbane from Winton.  We managed to get to tourist information before it closed but overall the town centre was dead.

We managed to get some food for dinner from one of the few shops in town and headed back to camp. It was not a very good night for sleeping as some of the town locals decided to have an all night party. With the town being so flat, and nowhere for noise to go except for across town, we had to put up with crap music until 3am. We later found out that despite having 4 police officers in town, they don't work after 8pm - obviously great if you want to play loud music all night.