Winton/Longreach

23 June

Waltzing Matilda Exhibition

After leaving Hughenden our next point of call was Winton. This town is supposedly where Banjo Patterson first sung Waltzing Matilda and there is a large centre there that celebrates this along with a small Qantas museum. The Qantas museum is really not that good but we were here for the Waltzing Matilda exhibition anyway. The exhibition was very good and told the story through the eyes of the swagman who was portrayed as a ghost through a television screen in the billabong.

Declan outside Quintilda Centre

The exhibition contained other areas including a gallery and many old tools, machinery, cars and everyday goods from years gone past.

Arno's Wall

While in Winton we looked at Arno's Wall - a very unusual perimeter wall to a residential property that contains all sorts of items salvaged from the local landfill. The wall reaches 2 metres high and runs for about 70 metres and is constructed from rock from his opal mine and studded everything including the kitchen sink.

After having lunch at one of the local cafes we headed on across to Longreach. Rather than stay there we kept going another 27kms to Ilfracombe, a small town on the other side of Longreach that has a caravan park that was highly recommended by quite a few travellers that we had bumped into. The owners of the Ilfracombe Caravan Park run a happy hour where everyone from the park congregates in a small shed to chat to each other, eat nibbles and listen to them tell jokes and bush poetry. Tonight it was Cathy's turn and after giving a bit of information about local sights had us in stitches for about an hour.

Tom & Declan with a Boeing 747 jet engine

24 June
The next morning we drove back into Longreach to see the Qantas Museum, based here as the first ever Qantas flight took off from Longreach and flew to Cloncurry. The museum, although not run by Qantas, is very well stocked with Qantas planes and artifacts and we spent a couple of hours in there. We took a tour of 2 Qantas planes - a Boeing 747 jet 'City of Bunbury' and the Boeing 707 'City of Canberra'. The tour guide was very informative and as well as telling us much information about the different parts of the planes told us about their history as well.
After the Qantas Museum we looked around Longreach and did a bit of shopping before heading back for happy hour again. Tonight Jesse was on stage and was again very funny. He was having such good fun that he lost track of time and we had to leave to make dinner for the kids.


25 June

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Today we went and saw the Australian Stockmans Hall of Fame. This is held in a massive 5 storey building and displays pioneering life in Australia and the roles of the stockmen. It is very comprehensive and has a lot of original tools that have been donated and replicas of other items that are no longer available. We then saw a very good show put on by a stockman. He told us about horses and camels as well as using a team of bullocks to load a log onto a wagon. His sense of humour was fantastic and continually had the large audience laughing histerically.

Stockmans Show @ Stockmans Hall of Fame

We had lamb burgers at the Cattleman's Bar and Grill before heading back in to see the rest of the exhibition. After some more shopping in Longreach (to get Tom's birthday present - don't tell him) we went back to Ilfracombe to go to happy hour again. But not before a lovely soak in the naturally heated artesian spa. This is about 32 degrees all year round and free to use. This time Cathy and Jesse's three kids, between 8 and 13, took the stage and were just as confident and funny as their parents. After a couple of bush poems each Jesse took the stage and again had us in stitches, the hour that he had the stage went very quickly.