I Can Feel a Fourex Comin’ On

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We’ve had a mixed few days since our last instalment, with some very touristy activities and some food for thought about the struggles and sacrifices to settle these areas in the first place.

Longreach is a very nice little town on the Thomson River, now a little bit more prosperous after we visited all its attractions.

Some of these attractions are well known – the Qantas Founders Museum, for example with everything from their original hangar to a 747, which, rather sadly, although it was able to land on Longreach’s short airstrip, will never take off again. We thought the museum was quite well done, with lots of interesting exhibits and good audio-visual stuff as well. The focus is on the early days and the two barnstorming WW1 pilots who started the whole thing, rather than the corporate monster it became.

Still on the tourist trail, we caught a sunset cruise on the Thomson River, putt putting along on a paddle wheeler for an hour or so before being served some kind of stew around the campfire for dinner. The damper with cocky’s joy was about the highlight of the whole performance, although the “Barefoot Bush Poet” wasn’t too bad. We saw him the following day working in the local service station and he was still barefoot.

Next morning we went for a ride on a stagecoach. This was pretty good – promising to provide an authentic experience of travelling by coach, although we only bumped around for half an hour rather than two or three days. It was certainly rough and dusty as promised.

The stagecoach ride was followed by a couple of add-ons – firstly a screening of the great Australian classic “Smiley Gets a Gun”. A celebration of now-deceased over-acting talent – Chips Rafferty, Leonard Teale, Ruth Cracknell – it made Skippy look like something by Quentin Tarantino.

Then, not to be outdone (or “out-hammed”, perhaps) there was a live show. Our stagecoach driver had a role, as did our bus driver/cook from the previous night. There were some funny bits, and the animals were well trained, but the thing that made it enjoyable was the unashamed amateurism of it all – you walked out appreciating the courage of the performers if not the talent.

The Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame is maybe Longreach’s premier attraction, although we found it a bit short of the hype. Maybe “Smiley Gets a gun” was too hard to follow. It did some things very well, however, including tracing the history of exploration of Australia and exploring all the roles of the people that followed – squatter, free selector, shearer, stockman, hawker,etc.

The “Unsung Heroes” are featured throughout the museum – regular people from all walks of country life who showed devotion and perseverance and made a mark, maybe small, on the development of their district, or their town, or their property. No doubt there are countless others who are equally deserving of a place on the museum wall.

Winton’s Walzing Matilda Centre was also a bit overblown (it’s just a song, for chrissakes), although they were brave enough to present the Dame Edna version alongside the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Winton was also the latest in a series of places we visited that celebrate the gathering together of antique machinery and knick knacks. At the latest count we have seen 2 iron lungs, 2 railway engines, 3 bottle collections, 3 gun collections, untold old pieces of farm junk and at least 4 telephone switchboards. It seems that the Progress Associations’ Annual Conference must have had old useless item gathering high on the list of “How to put your town on the map”.

There were some other attractions in Winton, too, so desirable that we invested in the Winton “Silver Attractions Pass”. The Opal Walk (individual cost - $3) consists of a 10 metre or so walk through a corrugated iron tunnel with some contrived-looking opal exhibits and a few model dinosaur bones, then a look at Winton’s open-air cinema (still operating on Wednesday nights) and the projection equipment. The guy that checked our tickets told us we would have to hurry as they closed in 15 minutes; we were easily out in ten.

Then there’s the supremely bizarre Arno’s Wall, a long concrete wall with all sorts of everyday objects – toilets to tricycles, bedsteads to baskets – embedded in it.

Man-made stuff aside, though, it’s the Aussie landscape that is the real attraction out here. We really enjoyed watching the landscape gradually change from the relatively mountainous country near Emerald to the endless plains of Mitchell grass of Longreach and then into drier, hillier country again as we went north to Mount Isa. From a plane you can see how vast the area is, but when only you drive through it all day do you really appreciate the scale of the undertaking to settle in these places.

Speaking of the scale of the undertaking, we spent a few hours at the Royal Flying Doctor Museum in Cloncurry. John Flynn was a guy who appreciated the sacrifices and deprivations of the people of the outback, and who had the drive and courage to do something about it. A truly inspiring man.

Mount Isa, like most Queensland mining towns, is booming – no doubt there would be more inspiring pioneer stories here as well if you looked for them. But other than a dinner at the Buff’s Club (??!!) we avoided this town with its enormous mining scar along one side. We also spent a peaceful few hours at scenic Lake Moondarra reflecting on life in general.

Next stop – Northern Territory.

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