Gismo Queen and her King

Day 5 - Tambo to Longreach

As we were having coffee on the banks of the Barcoo River this morning, watching the sun rise over the trees lining the river, Greg asked "Wonder what the poor people are doing right now?".

Us and the other 8 caravans lined up on the riverbank left progressively from 8am. As we drove out we noticed signs to the "Qantas crash site" opposite our camp. Turns out this was the first fatal Qantas crash in 1927, and the descendents marked the site with a memorial only a few years ago. But, more on this to come later in our day.

We drove 100km up the road to Blackall but were on a roll so we kept driving. Another 100 or k's and we were in Barcaldine, but by now we were keen to get to Longrach so we kept going, hence missing the Tree of Knowledge. Another 100 or so k's and we arrived in Longreach by lunchtime. The novelty of a caravan park (which thankfully we booked yesterday, as the whole town is chockers with people and caravans!) so I had my first real experience of backing into a site in this tiny, very quaint caravan park. We then had to remember to set up power and water and sullage - all those things we haven't bothered about in the bush.

A quick test of the airconditioning to cool the van down (it was 33C as we were setting up) and then we were back in the car (we almost hear it joyfully drive out of the caravan park without anything behind it! ah, the freedom!) out to the Qantas Founders Museum. We had lunch in their cafe first before doing the museum. This was an excellent set up with lots of audio experiences, with great stories from the founders of Qantas and their descendents (the museum has nothing to do with modern Qantas, it is in fact a non-profit entity), and the potential to climb into all sorts of planes. We both "flew" the Avro simulator, and climbed into the DC3.
We then went into the original hangar where Qantas started, and where they built their first 6 planes. One of the guides at the museum told us about a presentation he was giving next week, called "Rainman got it wrong", where he tells the tale of Qantas' 18 crashes, many of them with fatalities. He was how we learned about the Tambo crash (which was the first). Back in the hangar, we climbed into a DC50.
We spent a pleasant afternoon at the museum and would highly recommend it to anyone coming to this neck of the woods. After brief consideration of whether to do the 747 and 707 tours in the morning (including studying them up close), we headed back to the caravan park for beer o'clock.
In all the excitement of being in a big town (comparably) again, we thought we'd get takeaway tonight. Who would have thought that was so hard? Although it was pleasing to see the big commercial takeaway giants haven't made it here yet, we struggled to find anything. I don't know if it's because State of Origin is on and everyone is watching that (even the local fire station had the appliances on the apron and chairs in the engine bay to watch it on a big screen) but in the end we settled for some ordinary pizza - and then wished we hadn't. Sometimes, the simplicity of bush cooked food is best.

posted by Tracey @ 9:10 pm