Our Yeppoon trip from Brisbane went well with Faysie in good
form and our stored goods looking Ok. We
spent the weekend with Henry and Charlie who kept us busy on the beach while
their Mum and Dad enjoyed a peaceful time.
Everyone is keeping well. Our
house still looks as if it is being well looked after and the rent is still
coming in.
Our house in Yeppoon
Just as we were leaving the van went in for its repairs and
was finished on Friday 11 May. We got
ourselves organised and stocked it on Thursday and left on Friday after the
last decal was attached. They appear to
have done a good job and everything is working as it should.
The last week in Brisbane was leading up to Mother’s Day and
Isobel’s school put on a special Morning Tea which Carol got to attend. Isobel took part in the morning assembly and
then stood up in front of her class and the Mums and Grandmas and made the
welcome address. Carol said she spoke
very well. The school do a great job
making everyone feel included and welcome; it was a very nice morning. On the Thursday nite before we left Isobel
took us out to ‘Sizzles’ for our farewell dinner. David, Shaneen and Will joined us and we had
a good catch up. Will is turning 5 this
week. The girls filled up on salad bar
and deserts and enjoyed playing with Will and his birthday toy.
Proud Mums & Grandmums
After our goodbyes to Kirsty, Ben and the girls we picked
the van up and made it to ‘Stanmore’ where Andrew is in the middle of his 15th
season picking cotton. This year he has
a new 6 row picker and some ‘fresh off the boat’ Irish backpackers. Nicholas and Danielle are all growed up
now. They both have their own cars now.
Nick has a ute to carry his motorbike around and Dani has a nice little Corolla
in which she is learning to drive. We
spent a good night catching up and Garry spent a couple of hours out on the
picker with Andrew. The ride home in the
back of the ute at 10pm was fresh.
From Dalby we made Roma and stayed a couple of nights to
sort out the van again. We also wanted
to visit the Big Rig as we have seen it many times as we have rushed throooough
Roma on our way to somewhere else. The
Oil & Gas story is good and we were surprised by the adjoining parks and
BBQ areas along the creek. They have a
miniature train track which runs often and has 15 minute rides for the kids for
only $2. It is worth a stopover. We also visited the largest bottle tree which
is over 9 feet around.
Oil Pump at the Big Rig, Roma
Roma's Big bottle tree - 9ft around
I was unsure of the road condition west of Roma and enquired
at the van park. The guy told me it was
a one lane bitumen road and was in poor condition. In fact it is 2 lanes and is excellent. It is no doubt better than Toowoomba to Dalby
which is a disgrace. It is the roughest
bumpiest piece of bitumen we have driven over.
Roma to Charleville to Blackall is a great road but the kangaroos are
thick after the good couple of wet seasons.
Charleville is a real outback town with many shop buildings
dating from early last century. One in
particular still has the big white ‘V’ painted on the red brick wall from the
day Japan surrendered in 1945 at the end of WW2. We took an evening tour of the Cosmos Centre
which is a tourist attraction featuring a look at the night sky through very
powerful telescopes. It is a great
facility. The telescopes (3 of) are
housed in a long dark building in which the roof rolls back after everyone’s
eyes have become accustomed to the dark.
The scopes are computer controlled so that they locate the target we
want to see and track it so that everyone gets a chance to look at each
object(s) for a good time. We saw blue
and yellow stars close together (binary stars)(different colours = different
ages), systems of over a million stars in one group, Saturn with its rings
perfectly clear as you see it books, and more.
It was a very interesting event but sitting in the open in the dark in
the middle of a cold snap made it memorable.
Blankets were provided and welcome.
The whole sky was so clear and with so little surrounding light was a
great show – highly recommended.
One of the Telescopes at Charleville Cosmos Centre
Rainmaking Canon from 1910 - unsuccessful
Carols new best friend a 6 wk old German short haired pointer
Augathellas Big Meat Ant
Tambo waterhole and rest area - original hole dug by horse drawn scoop.
Tambo Post & Telegraph Museum - the first phone I remember in our Hospital Road house in Emerald.
Wandering on to Blackall, we set up camp beside the Barcoo
River ($5 per van per night) along with more than 20 other vans. The camp area is huge and we were still 20m
apart. The town supplies free hot
showers and toilets in the adjacent street.
We had a good walk around Blackall next morning seeing the Big Ram, a
wool dray, old farm machinery, a fossilised tree stump, a distinctive Masonic
building, the Black Stump, and the Pioneer Artesian Bore – the first Govt bore
sunk in Queensland. The bore water comes
from over 800m underground and is around 60 deg C. In the evening we enjoyed a tour of the
Blackall Wool Scour which the only remaining steam driven shearing shed and
wool scour (wool washer). All of the
machinery was in perfect working order except for the steam boiler. The first 2 boilers are still in place but
steam is now produced by a new diesel/electric boiler. A single steam drive engine runs the 20 stand
shearing shed, 2 bale presses, 2 X 5 tank wool scours (washers), 2 steam
dryers, and several conveyors included a belt to load bales onto the train. A
small workshop with several steam driven grinders, saws, etc area also run off
the engine. The old steam boilers used
to burn 1.5 ton of gidyea wood a day and the shed processed more than 100,000
sheep per season. The wool scour
operated from 1908 until 1978. Jackie
(John) Howe was a local who shore sheep locally until he was 39 having set a
record for shearing sheep that was never beaten. At 39 he bought 2 pubs in town, a sheep
station, and was the local Ford dealer.
He died at 59 of an inflamed liver – any connection to the 2 pubs I
wonder? Jackie never shore in the Wool
Scour as he had retired to the pubs before it was built. Following the tour we
enjoyed dinner in the kitchen used by the employees at the scour. Dinner was curry lamb and rice and stew and
dumplings followed by a jelly and custard, steamed pudding, butterscotch tart,
and blamonge (?). It was great old
fashioned cooking and an enjoyable night spent with a dozen or so locals.
Wool dray at Blackall - carried 12 ton of wool oulled by bullocks
The Big Ram
The original Black Stump - a survey point sadly burned and replaced with a petrified stump.
Steam driven artesian bore percussion drill rig from the 1890's
Locals visit the Barcoo River camp each afternoon. They have 16 buggies & sulkies made from scrap at the dump.
Barcaldine was a stopover next and we visited the Australian
Workers Heritage Museum. This was a good
facility and contained many good heritage displays including a complete old
primary school which bought back memories as it was exactly the same layout and
design as the Emerald State School that I attended a year or two ago. We also checked out the dead remains of the
‘tree of knowledge’ (?) which is now covered by a huge modern ugly structure
paid for by the tax payers of Queensland.
It was interesting to see that none of the major shearers strikes that
led to the formation of the ALP were successful; each failing by the use of
non-union workers or by the arrest and jailing of the strike leaders. The adjacent Railway Station was interesting. Before leaving town Carol took my photo in
front of the Barcaldine Hospital which was my birthplace only 56 years ago.
Blackall Wool Scour tour guide 'Beaver' - also the washer upper after dinner.
Workers Heritage Centre - only 685kms left to Mt Isa
Counters from the old Emerald Post Office
Garry returns to his place of birth
Ilfracombe was the next stop heading west which has the
largest display of antique machinery we have seen anywhere. When I came through in 1971 with my parents,
the collection of old farm machinery had commenced and consisted of about 10
pieces and a single shed. Today the
machinery stretches along the northern side of the highway for nearly 2 kms. There are hundreds of farm machines, trucks,
dozers, graders, and several buildings with great displays in them.
Machine or beast ? Part if the Machinery Mile at Ilfracombe
Walking Arm artesian bore drill rig
We have made it to Longreach in time for the Annual Show for
the next 2 days but are assured that the touristy things will still be open so
it’s off to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame tomorrow. That will be in next week’s blog.
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