Around Australia part 3

Trip Around Australia   Part 3

 

9 July

A sleep in, finally!  Woke at 8.30 and got some washing done.  Andrew wanted his bike out of the car so we maneuvered that. There are signs of drought here still.  There are patches of grass which are obviously watered and the rest of the country side is just brown and dead.  We headed off to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame after lunch.  The whole family was here back in 1999.  I remember Andrew (who was 2) and I sat out the trip into the museum as it was too expensive at the time.  I don’t think the prices have changed since then as the entry for adults at $22 and children at $12.50 wasn’t too bad.  It is really well set out and we got some good photos.  There was a dummy stockman sitting at a dummy campfire telling yarns in a theatrette that was good to watch.  The face was a projection of a real person and to watch the story being told with all the appropriate facial expressions but no movement of the mannequins head, was quite eerie.  We looked at hats and whips and tshirts – but nothing grabbed our imagination.  We headed out to Longreach itself for a few supplies, and after we had stowed it all away Andrew suggested a spa.  This was a really good idea!  There is an enclosure with three hot spas, each with their own controllers.  There is a man made cave with waterfall cascading over the top and a river winding its way through the enclosure.  It was lovely to lie in the spa with nice warm water swirling all around.  It was about 23 degrees, the sun was out, the sky clear, no wind, the trickle of running water behind me – Yep best idea Andrew has had yet!

 

10 July

Ahh another sleep in,  many vans departed this morning so I was awake by – oh, let me think, gee, 8.30!  That clicking that the jayco’s make as they are being wound up and wound down really is memorable!  Our first stop for today was the Longreach School of Distance Education.  As it was school holidays there were no classes in session but we got a good tour of the school and an appreciation of the challenges faced by both teachers and students when trying to do school of the air.  There were examples of the kids work on display and it  is interesting to see the different methods and materials used to do the same assignment when  the kids cant see each others work. One of the assignments was for grade 5’s to make a windmill.  The examples ranged from ones made out of cardboard and icypole sticks to many made out of metal and wire and welded or pop riveted together.  The school Librarian buys books for the school and one of the ways they fund these purchases is that they then put these books into the turist information centre in the school and give the tourists the opportunity to buy the book for $15 and donate it back to the school with their name and suburb/town of origin.  The tourist gets a bookmark thanking them for the donation and the kids get a good book with the donors name and address.  The tutors get the kids to look up the places people come from (on google earth etc) and the kids get a geography lesson as well.  There are approx 150 kids being taught at the school and the teachers have responsibility for 12 at a time but only six at a time on air.  Both primary and secondary schooling is available but secondary only goes to year 10.  They do lose a lot of the kids at the end of year 7 when they are about to start high school, they tend to go to boarding school.

Our next stop was the QANTAS museum.  It was fabulous.  Andrew and I both decided that it was probably a good thing for us that Dad wasn’t with us as we would be stuck there for about 1 million years!!  However we did spend a really enjoyable 2 hours wandering around the museum and we also did a tour of a 747-200.  In the museum they had film of the start of Qantas, lots of model planes, lots of interviews on video, plenty of hands on stuff including a model bi plane you could control with a joystick.  Andrew really enjoyed that.  There were examples of uniforms through the ages, you got to go into the original hanger and find out more about the engineering side.  It was fascinating to see a shell of the cockpit with all the wires hanging out!!  The amount of wiring is huge I know but to actually see it – just makes you think that the aircraft electricians must love a good jigsaw!.  The tour of the 747 was fabulous.  The tour guide could spout useless information about the 747 in a manner that makes Dad look uninformed.  He just keep giving more information, you thought he was about to run out and he would be off again.  We started under the rear of the plane and he went through everything from the ACASS (aircraft collision warning system) to the toilet waste system and a cart ingeniously called the Honey Cart.  Inside we saw the black box (in position) the passenger door slide, the computer bay, business class and upstairs to what was 1^st class in the early 70’s where  you could see inside the cockpit.  We had thought of doing the wing walk tour where you get to stand on the wing of the 747 – but at $85 each we couldn’t justify it.  So much information today with both the school and museum we were zonked.  So it was back to the van for a rest.  Andrew hit the spa again and I just lazed in my chair with my book and a jug of iced tea. (my idea of bliss)  We have an early start tomorrow for Mt isa. 

 

11 July

Up at 7 to pack up and we were out of the park by 8.40.  There is more junk to pack away when you settle in for a few days.  We drove off and prepared ourselves for a long day.  The first town out of Longreach is 160km away in Winton.  After Winton we settled in for a 360km stretch to Cloncurry, there are a couple of small towns along the way but they are really just  truck stops, more than towns, however between Kynuna and McKinlay there was a massive grass fire.  It stretched for about 10km along the highway and rushed inland from there.  Luckily we weren’t near any flames – just lots of burnt grass.  The road is also a good fire break.  As we came into Cloncurry there is a big sign that says.  “Australia’s hottest temperature recorded here – 53.? Degrees.  Cloncurry wishes you a very warm welcome!”  Just as well it is winter Huh!  Andrew was amazed at the rapidly changing scenery – from flat grasslands to grasslands with Ant Hills and then on to the rocky outcrop ( Mountains supposedly) that surrounds Mt Isa. We stopped to check out a Burke and Wills monument and we filled our water bottles.  We were into the Van park by 4.30 – another successful days drive!

 

12 July

A quick phone call to the information centre told me that Mt Isa Anglican Church started at about 9am this morning – so it was a quick trip to the shower and off to church.  There was a christening this morning which made for a great day.  I knew all but one of the hymns we sang and really enjoyed singing them rather than playing for a change.  Not that I would give up playing for an instant.  The church was hall style with many stained glass windows.  Some with saints on them and some with general pictures of Jesus talking to people.  It was interesting to see miners in orange overalls included in the stained glass.  They have a volunteer “associate” priest.  Makes me realize again just how lucky we are to have Gail in the Upper Yarra.

After church it was off to the Mt Isa information centre.  This is where we could see the fossils, and do the underground mine tour.  The fossil museum was OK bits of it were great, other bits were well disappointing.  The first thing you see is an informative dvd presentation about Riversleigh, which is the most prolific fossil site in Australia.  More than Half of what is known about prehistoric Australia comes from this site.  The DVD should have been fabulous but it was so old it kept skipping – just as you got interested in what the speaker was saying it would jump to another part of the presentation.  You got a bit of an idea though.  The diorama of the different animals was very lifelike and put animals and reptiles into position of trees, rocks, gullies, rainforest.  You wandered around a cavernous hallway one side of which was just the diorama.  Trees hung over the walkway – it was very lifelike.  At the end of the hallway was a display of actual fossils  some you could touch and some you couldn’t.  There was a large sandpit with a full skeleton buried in it and the kids could get in there with a brush and “dig” for the skeleton and reveal it bit by bit.  Andrew loved it!

The underground mine tour was fabulous.  It reminded me of the tour of the Debourah mine in Bendigo.  But it had some bigger machinery as well.  The only disappointment with it was that it wasn’t an actual mine.  Mt Isa Mines had previously done tours but a couple of people tried to sue after spraining their ankles on the tour and so even though they weren’t successful, the mine ceased all tours.  What the town and miners did was create a “mine” 20 metres down just behind the information building.  The off duty miners would go down and drill the crib room out and the different sections.  They created a explosive wall and a drilling wall and a stope area where they had a large machine to show you how big and how loud it all was.  It was really well done – just fake!  It was amazing to hear how they would move obsolete machinery into the stope area and back fill with concrete and other waste material and then use that as the supporting wall to dig out the next bit of ore!  The tour took about 2.5 hours.

Back to the van park for more washing, dinner and bed.

 

13 July

A day off!  Got my hair cut, did a bit of shopping for the next week or so (no real shops on the way to Kakadu)  Fuelled up and picked up a few new books.  Kakadu here we come!  Don’t be surprised if there is a bit of a wait till you hear from me next  - I don’t expect phone reception for about a week and a half till we get to Darwin!  I will phone home on a land line where possible to reassure loved ones I am still OK!