Experiencing outback Central Queensland’s country towns

23 to 28 August This was the start of an interesting week without plans, and we began by setting off for a little village we had been told about called Ilfracombe, east, just the other side of Longreach. Its "Great Machinery Mile" of tractors and old engineeringequipment is known around Australia to tractor buffs. We had heard tales of the “happy hour” there, and the welcome given to travelling folk. Running later than we have ever done before (because of kangaroos) we rang ahead to ensure a berth, and luckily got the last bay available, next to the highway where the road trains thundered by regularly. We got there half way through the daily "happy hour" celebrations and most were on their third beer and the jokes were becoming predictably blue. Actually they were downright filthy, but the audience was extremely appreciative. It was very funny but we realised we were about one and half decades too early! Happy hour is a tradition we encountered at a couple of campgrounds lately and seems to be a Queensland tradition.

And now, in complete contrast, with the desert well behind us, we settled down to a diet of tourism by travelling back and forth into Longreach – a day at the Qantas museum and a day at the Stockmen’s Hall of Fame sponsored by RM Williams. We were both totally absorbed at both museums and enjoyed ourselves immensely (contrary to our expectations).

Qantas started life at Winton, soon moved to Longreach where they were the only airline in the world to manufacture their own aeroplanes under licence. Then they moved to Mascot, flying boats and the link with Imperial Airways in UK, before becoming properly international with the purchase of their first Boeing 707. This aircraft is at Longreach, fully restored in the UK (and flown out with some trepidation a couple of years ago) by a dedicated team of retired Aussie engineers and cabin crew who went back there to rescue it from a graveyard at Southend Airport where it had languished for six years. It had been converted for use by pop and film stars, leased by Michael Jackson, Madonna, and others, before being purchased by a Saudi prince. The lingering smell of hookah pipes in the “living room” and the fully mirrored double bedroom, gold plated taps on the bidet, let alone the bar, give the imagination plenty to work on. In 2006 Qantas retired one of its last 747’s to Longreach, the ones that still used a flight engineer on board, before they were computerised. It landed there unladen and with almost no fuel on board, in order to be able to stop on the tiny runway. And that is where it will stay! The Qantas airline history must be one of the most interesting you would come across, and the new building that houses the displays is a good one.

The Hall of Fame tells the story of Australia’s drovers and cattlemen very well, in a building that defies complimentary description (others apparently love it). We have followed the tales of the explorers and pioneers, squatters and the big cattle barons. The challenges they met were in a world totally different from the one we live in today. The stories are admirable, and the link with the emergence of one of the worlds’ foremost airlines is well made. Considering its isolation Longreach has unique drawcards for the tourist dollar, and is a vibrant small centre on the Capricorn Highway.///

After three nights in Ilfracombe we moseyed a short distance east to Barcaldine and set up where happy hour is one of the advertising drawcards for the caravan park. We heard on the vine that a chap named Tom Lockie runs a day long 300km tour that, through his special connections, takes you to places you would not otherwise get to. He was part of the happy hour act, and at 7am the next morning we peeled off $280 and climbed aboard his Coaster bus for an extraordinary day. In some ways it epitomised the Australian bush experience. With the help of a local character (donkeys would have no hind legs in Barcaldine) Tom, who knows every bit of history about the place being an ex drover himself, makes seemingly innocuous things take on real meaning, it is fascinating indeed. An example. We were not ten minutes on our way when he stopped across the road from a very old, very ordinary and now very unused pair of gateposts. No, these were the posts that were the original town gates of Barcaldine. Meant for horse drawn wagons, cars going through (and especially if the gate was left open) were fined. After much lobbying the local Council provided a separate ramp and grid for the cars to use. Sure enough, there in the scrub were the remains of the grid. This dated back to about 1920, and whilst relatively recent in time, it’s simplicity is tantalising, and soon to be gone along with Tom himself. ‘Who will tell the tale then?”we ask. To which the answer is a shrug of the shoulders.///

We visited one of the most inaccessible and yet well known aboriginal art sites. On a property called “Gracevale”, it is the only art site where the cycle of life is represented by footprints etched into the rock. It has been visited recently by Navajo elders from N America for whom the representation of the cycle holds special meaning. The art here is also unusual in that it is thought to represent the Milky Way, and the Southern Cross is clear to see. The next site we visited was Mailman’s Gorge with Gordon's Cave, site of a massacre. The tale is a familiar one in which a government surveyor is speared by a tribesman. The entire aboriginal group was driven into the cave and all of the men young and old, were then murdered.

Now on private property, the ruined hotel site where the Cobb & Co coaches used to stop around 1890 is marked by the thousands of names of the travellers who whiled away a couple of hours by chiselling their details into Gray's Rock beside the old roadway. The roadway has gone now, except for parallel ridges of raised hard clay that can be traced through the scrub, where decades of hard wheels have compressed and hardened the surface. Rains have removed the material around the old ruts, leaving them now as ridges.

Barcaldine of course, is the home of the now dead “Tree of Knowledge” that has recently been recreated in controversial three dimensional form in the main street. The tree was the meeting place of striking shearers in 1891, and is where the union and Labour movement began. Premier Anna Bligh formally “opened” the new installation in May. There are some stories about who was responsible for the death of the tree but a well informed local told us that the tree, old as it was, was given the coup de grace by the local council. Some time after Premier Goss planted another tree next to the old one, the Council commissioned extensive exposed aggregate paving works surrounding both trees. They did not specify any protection works for the trees. Acid washing was used to expose the aggregate. Hey presto – two dead trees. Paving looks terrific though! The other story is that the council used the same watering truck to water the trees as they had used to spray Roundup on the railway lines. Who'd be a Council CEO?!

The installation is a real Jekyll and Hyde affair. During the day this enormous and frankly ugly black box towers above the township and is visible for miles around. It squats in the main street and traffic is now obliged to steer around it. At night though....green lighting from within the massive ribbed cube, illuminates facetted pieces of suspended hardwood in such a way that you can clearly see a ghost of the tree as it was in its maturity. The roots have been exposed and can be seen under a glass floor. As the workers were clearing away the soil they came across a brass plaque that had been secretly buried at the base of the tree by a grieving widow. Marked in remembrance of a “True Believer”, it was secured amongst the roots and is now part of the installation. After dark it is magical, and well worth stopping a night in Barcaldine for. It will work wonders for the local economy.

We drove to Isisford on our third day there, about 150 kms away. This is where a fossilised crocodile (Isisfordia Duncanii) has recently been found, and whilst it predates most of the dinosaurs, this one has characteristics shared only with modern crocodiles. So it is the ancestor of the modern crocodile, and you should see how this community of about one hundred works it for all it is worth. A visit to the semi-circular shearing shed (unique in Australia and one of two in the world; the other is in Argentina) at Isis Downs is something well worth doing. It is the property that Sir Rupert Clarke originally developed at the turn of the 19/20 Centuries, along with his solicitor. It was more efficient (but had the reputation of being a very hot shed) and was made possible by the invention of the electric shearing machine. That of course meant they had to generate their own electricity, itself a first in the industry. Clarke was obviously a very far sighted operator.

After a further three nights in Barcaldine we felt we had really “done” the country towns and it was time to move along. We had made contact with old buddy Dr Barry Gilbert, who spends every other month on Hamilton Island looking after the health and well being mostly of the shipboard tourists. He has kindly opened his doors to us in the second week in September, so now we have a plan and will spend a couple of weeks working our way to Shute Harbour where we can catch the ferry on 8 Sep.