Outback Queensland road trip Day 9: Longreach, Changing plans

 

 

By the numbers

Plans changed 2

Bogged 1

Randomness happens 2

Walked 7.61kms

 

Overnight I listened to the rain on the roof for a couple of hours. I think there was rain for most of the night and I wouldn’t know it, but this little bit of wet weather would change my whole day around as plans would shift and swap days. We were booked for an early start and I was happy to be on the road just before 8am so I could go on a stage coach ride in the morning with lunch and morning tea, then a paddle boat ride later that afternoon with dinner and sunset. That was what I hoped for.

 

The reality was much different. We turned up and was told the tour would be unable to proceed as it was too wet for the coach and the horses so we could change it for the next day. The thing with tomorrow was that I had other plans and wasn’t sure if the Qantas Founders museum would allow for that. I told the lady at the tour group that I will rock up and ask. She loved that idea. We left and then turned up at the museum just as it was opening for the day. I was told I sure can change the day and got a wrist band where I could come and go as I pleased, and if I wanted to could jump on any tour.

 

I was happy for this and was able to walk into the museum. It was about the people who founded the museum, and the hardships of the country. The two main founders veterans of Gallipoli and had done some flying during World War 1 had seen the need for flights in the regional part of Australia especially Queensland. Travel to many places could take weeks or months due to weather conditions especially if the ground was boggy after rain. There was even a point in the life of the company where Qantas was building their own aircraft until the newer versions came out that performed better. They even had numerous discussions with John Flynn who would go on to create the Royal Flying Doctors, and was told they were not there technologically to do so. Throughout the museum they had interviews with family of the founders and even included talks with Nancy Bird about her relationship with Qantas. There was quite a lot more about the business than I had ever thought about including stories about their engineer who could fix a plane, but not a car. I could have gone of the other tours that were on offer, but the museum itself was remarkable and that includes showing the different uniforms of flight attendants and pilots over the years.

 

After several hours of reading about Qantas and looking at their many displays, I ended up in the gift shop to have a look and then we were off to have a look at Longreach Cemetery. We started off on one end and then the road became soft and we were a little stuck. I got out and pushed to get unstuck and we learnt just how bad a wet unsealed road in the area would be like after rain. The mud was sticky and we got out, which was lucky. We returned to the room to look for something to clean my boots and wash the car. We ended up at the local carwash and that was closed and there wasn’t another one to be found anywhere. We did try the cemetery again from a different side and the road was sealed.

 

The problem with walking around the Longreach Cemetery was that the whole area was soft and depending on where you would walk, you would sink in the soft ground. I wanted to find several of the people who had died on the Qantas plane that had crashed in Longreach back in the 1930s. If I was going to get muddy feet in a cemetery as I had to clean my boots, I wasn’t wanting to stick around for too long. I tried sticking to the stones and the further I walked the more I realised I would get bogged. While it was an interesting wander I thought it was best we didn’t linger on the soft ground as we would have more things to clean. When we returned I set to wiping the excess mud off my boots and got them to a point where I could just wash the mud off by hand. I did get to watch planes land as the airport is across the road. Around this time the second part of out tour was cancelled due to the bus not being able to get to the paddleboat. We also changed that for tomorrow, so will try again.

 

The next part of the adventure begins for the day and I liked this bit of randomness. We headed to the town of Ilfracombe, which was around 20kms down the road. We stopped and then I was directed to what was beside us. It was in a way a living museum as there were machinery lining the side of the road from trucks to earth moving equipment known as the machinery mile. Mum had been there before and this was my first time. We walked all the way along the street to see what there was. There were trucks, old pumps, a bottle display and static displays of life in the old days. There was a house that was the old police station that had pictures of a station that was called Wellshot that told about life on the property. We did have a look in the pub and there were hats on the walls and money stuck to the roof. I found the town to be interesting as I wandered around and it was slowly getting to late afternoon, so we headed back to Longreach for some food and to try again tomorrow. The RSL was packed when we arrived, but out food came fast. There was some tagalong group and another group and I would say it was hard to hear in there. We ate and got out of there.