QI Tour - Charleville (Days 30-32)

The trip to Charleville from Cunnamulla was uneventful. Disappointingly, the colourful and interesting little shop at Wyandra was closed because it was Saturday, which was a pity. It’s has a lot of funny signs which would have been good to see again. It appears to have been repainted and looks very bright.

Our digs in Charleville are slightly out of town, set into a former property and very much a bush setting. Fire pit late each afternoon, pizza and damper nights and lots of talking around the circle.

Sue

A retired School of the Air teacher gave an informative talk about the Greater Bilby. These are the cutest little mammals and my all time favourite. I did this talk once before but I was all large ears to hear it all again. 

A wild colony was discovered in outback QLD and they were saved from extinction by two men one a zoologist and the other took on raising funds to build a fence around the colony. The wild colony was relocated to a secure compound near Charlieville whilst the fence was erected and all feral animals killed. The feral cat is the main predator. Today inside the 5x5km fenced enclosure is 400 Bilbies. A breeding program with other bilbies from WA and NT, flown in, freshen up the colony. They do not suffer diseases unlike the Tassie Devil. After the talk we went into the nocturnal house to watch them hop about. Soooooo cute. Yep I bought the T-shirt. 

While Sue was enjoying the Bilbies, I went around to the Charleville Airport, the hub of lots of the town's tourism. I enjoyed a nice coffee in the cafe and had a long chat with one of the two gentlemen in town with their original Wirraway trainer, as part of a weekend of celebrations for Wings On The Warrego, a combination of traditional airshow and cutting edge technology in drones. We missed it as most of the events were happening on the day we were driving from Cunnamulla. The history of this particular plane was interesting, as was the pilot's own journey. After time training and flying with the RAAF, he went on to be a senior captain and check pilot with Cathy Pacific for thirty years. He has more than 30,000 flying hours.

The invitation for a 20 minute joyflight was decline on cost!

New since our last visit was the WWII Secret Base Museum. It celebrates the American air base that was established in Charleville in 1942. B-17 bombers were brought to the base for maintenance. At one stage, there were 3,600 personal on the base, more than the population of Charleville. Among the exhibits are audio and video training programs telling the Americans how to behave in Australia. They included decoded slang phrases. 

We watched documentaries about the development of K Rations and how to service the engines of the B-17s. There were recreations of a mess hall, interactive displays of the working of the Norton Bombsite, even a dance floor and band music where you can dress up in clothes from the time and boogey - which we naturally did!

Lots of information, presented in different ways. Really well done and included a special backroom visit to a model of a B-17 being constructed for display at a future time in the museum.

In a separate room, local heroes who have served in the military are celebrated. Many recent among them appear in video clips talking about why they joined the armed forces.

The Cosmos Centre - a nerd paradise for those interested in space and astronomy - was a re-visit but this time include the night tour which we missed previously. Sitting in the open, you are shown stars and nebula through telescopes and have constellations pointed out in the night sky. Sue got more from it than me as I found looking through the eye pieces of the telescopes difficult and the images blurry, whether I had my glasses on or off, resulting in a touch of nausea. After a few goes, I gave up and just enjoyed the night sky. Sue was excited to see the rings of Saturn. 

The Charleville Arfield Museum was another well set out, smaller museum, with interesting facts specifically about the airfield and its development. They had traffic control chatter playing through a speaker, which I always find captivating and various artefacts, some of which were tragic.

The Royal Flying Doctor Visitors Centre is an unmanned self tour, with visual and audio simulations of emergency calls and recreations of radio operations at both base and consumer end. The modern day medical kit is on display and plenty of intel about RFDS operations.

Also in the airport precinct is a a large, radial structure which will eventually be an Outback Museum, celebrating the life of the Qld outback and its people - from ancient time to modern. Like most major development projects, it has been fraught with delays but they are hoping to have it operating sometime in 2025.

On our last afternoon, we retired to the magnificent bar at the Hotel Corones, for a quiet beer and to watch some cricket. We had previously done the tour of this wonderful building with its colourful history.

That evening, we sat around the campfire back at our digs and had damper made by our hosts and the usual chinwag. I shared a poem with the group and few were kind enough to purchase some of my books.

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today's photos.

On our last morning we did a tour of the School of Distance Education, one of seven centres in Qld run by the state. The best part of the tour was sitting in the "classroom" as a secondary economics teacher supporting the learning activities of his students. Regular lessons are conducted via internet link, with various options for student/teacher interaction. Each term, they also conduct week long activities at the school where students and their parents travel up to 9 hours to spend the week together for sporting, cultural and academic endeavours.

Next stop will be to the east at Mitchell.