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.

Queensland Outback Tour - Old Planes & An Old Hotel

Our last day in Charleville was by far our best.

This morning we took ourselves out to the airport and grabbed an advantaged position to watch the landing of the twenty five planes taking part in the Royal Flying Doctor Service Pilgrimage - a flying tribute to make the 90th anniversary of the RFDS. The group are flying from Dubbo in the NSW Central West and had already visited Moree and Roma before Charleville. They will visit several other towns in Qld which have been important landmarks for the RFDS, before finishing the journey in Mount Isa.

There were some serious old birds among the group, including three Gypsy Moths. In they all came, one after the other and out stepped a variety of ... well it would be wrong to call them pilots, as their commitment is better rewarded with the term enthusiast. The surprising thing was the shortage of people who turned out to see the event. It has been poorly advertised, with the local paper saying they would cover the event after it had happened so they would have photos!

Sue, who knows little about planes, was enthralled and even though I don't know as much as either my brother or father, I have always loved aircraft, having at one stage wanted to be a fighter pilot in the same way most boys want to be firemen.

We went into town to The Black Sheep Cafe and had lunch, a delicious stew made on the premises. The cook even came to our table to check we had enjoyed it! Unbelievable hospitality in this town.

Amy Johnson's famous bathtub

Our afternoon was filled with a fascinating tour of the Hotel Corones and more stories about the man behind the place, Harry Corones. He started out as an owner of a cafe in Charleville - who would have thought, a Greek cafe owner - and moved into the Charleville Hotel as it licensee a few years later but it burnt down in the same year. It was rebuilt in brick to prevent fire and Corones signed a new lease. Soon after he built Charleville's first cinema and in subsequent years was one of the first shareholders in QANTAS.

In 1924, he started building Hotel Corones and from the start it was to be in grade style. Fully tiled walls and floor and the biggest bar top in Qld. Four ornate pillars were a feature of the bar and stained glass windows. Accommodation was added upstairs and a very fancy dining room. To this he added a dance hall beside the hotel which was the venue for all of Charleville's most important weddings.

Many famous guests have stayed at the Hotel Corones, including Gough Whitlam, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester (well one of those Royals), Brian Brown and many famous aviators. In 1930, the famous English aviatrix Amy Johnson, landed in Charleville as part a solo flight from England to Australia and of course, Harry Corones with his love of aviation, insisted she stay at his hotel. She ordered a bath be drawn but filled with champagne. 23 bottles did the job but Harry, always on the lookout for making an earned pound make another, had the bath drained back into the bottles and sold them as mementos!

A small landing from her room and one other beside it provided a secret access to the back of the hotel, where the famous could whisk consorts up a steep but unseen staircase and into their room.

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It was an excellent tour which was as much about the legendary Harry Corones as it was about his hotel.

Our evening ended with a campfire stew provided by the owners of our caravan park, the Bailey Bar and chats with fellow travellers.

Quensland Outback Tour - Town Tour & Museum

Lunch at Hotel Corones

We're still in Charleville ... in fact, finding it hard to leave. Everything we do is met with friendly people.

This morning we took the Heritage, Flood and Fire Tour, hosted by Graham Reid. We received an extensive run down on three floods in recent history (1990, 2010 & 2012) including their causes and consequences and what has been done to mitigate against further problems when the Warrego River bursts its banks. Graham was very knowledgeable used photographic evidence to great effect.

The final 45 minutes of the tour was a commentary of well know buildings put together by the local history society. As it played, Graham drove us to each point of interest. The thing which stood out was the high number of buildings which have been burned down over the history of Charleville, some of them such as pubs, several times!

This was a really good tour and great value at $10 a head.

After the tour, we visited the Historic House. Originally the residence for the manager and business quarters for the Queensland National Bank in 1889, it stayed that way for 53 years. From 1942 it was a private residence until a local group bought it and turned into it a museum reflecting lie in past times in Charleville. Its an interesting place, with lots to look at but as is often the case with these types of ventures, the volunteers are great and enthusiastic collectors but they lack the ability to curate. As a result, there is too much on display and as time has gone on, it has become haphazard, making many of the areas in the house cluttered.

We went back to Corones Hotel for lunch, this time sitting in the bar to enjoy the atmosphere. Sue had bangers and salad  and I had Barramundi. I forced a couple of cold beers down as well.

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We'll probably extend out to fifth night tomorrow as we want to do a history tour of the Corones Hotel and in the morning, 25 historic aircraft will be landing as part of a tour that is being flown to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Charleville has been a very friendly town for us.