Charleville, Qld
We were up relatively early after a good nights sleep. Although we were 20 kms out of Miles the trucks started nice and early. Being a cool night, you could here them roaring up the valley. Those damn Gas companies!
First stop, Roma. Had to pick a power supply for the laptop!
Susan then drove the rest of the way to Charleville. She gave up after counting a half a dozen dead animals (mostly roos) on the road. She did her best to flatten them even further! Arrived in Charleville mid-afternoon, and spent the rest of the day relaxing.
After a small sleep-in till 7am (and hearing the race horses train at about 4:30am across the road at the race course), we went for a walk into town, visited a historic house, went to the Corones pub that has the longest continuous bar in Australia. There a marker above the fire place mantle that shows how high the flood got too during the 1990 flood. It’s just above Susan’s head! The publican who built the Corones pub was very fond of aircarft, and had lots of famous aviators land in Charleville, Nancy Bird and Amy Johnson to name a couple. It was a bit warm so we and headed to the local council pool for a a swim. You forget how long a 50m pool is!
Wednesday night we went off to see the Bilbies at the Rangers office an met some of the young people working for Peter McRae, the guy who set up the first ‘wild’ Bilby sanctuary, and the ‘Save the Bilby’ campaign. They were doing well with hundreds of ‘wild’ Bilbies breeding like rabbits until the latest flood. They realised they built the 5km x 5km feral proof fence through some clay pans that have salt in them. Now they have lots of holes in it and of course now a feral cat problem, so they’re in full disaster recovery mode to save whats left.
After the Bilbies we went straight to the Cosmos centre for some star gazing through telescopes. Fantastic night for it too! Lots of starts to look at, and Jupiter was visible too.
Up early for the next stop – Longreach.
Did you know … #1?
Apparently Qantas actually started flights from Charleville, not Longreach. It’s maintenance hanger was eventually built in Longreach.
Nice spot. We enjoyed this town
Yeah, we enjoyed it too. Pity we only got to spend a couple of nights, but we’ll be able to come back some other time.
Ah to be on the road! I’m sad to hear about the bilbies dilemma – after so much effort. Hope they recover the program.
Went to this page and really enjoyed seeing your photos. Thanks.
Still jealous. Sounds like you are having a great time.
Love the photos – keep them up!
Hi Susan glad your having a good time, nice to see Greg is handy with the spanners.
thankyou for the LAZY LETTER it was a nice surprise and easy to read, shear magic.