Charleville Qld, July 11, 2024

 Charleville Qld, July 11, 2024

Two hundred kilometres in a northerly direction will take you from Cunnamulla to Charleville. And that is what we did, leaving late, about half past nine or so, and strolled up and into Charleville. Benn a few years since we were here last, and we had chosen to stay at the Bailey Bar caravan park again. I have to say that it's pretty tired and compared to Cunnamulla, cramped and dirty looking. It didn’t help that the man-on-the-mobile-chair really didn’t know how to direct us into our spot and to be honest, I just wish they’d leave us alone. As soon as he left to "help" another happy camper, we pulled it to and repacked it. After 15 years, we have it down pretty pat. Hardly even a raised voice these days!.

First thing to check out is the Cosmos Centre, which is somewhat larger than last time. The have a planetarium dome thing where we watched a great movie all about the solar system and planets and things. Inside the main building they a have a display, the highlight of which is this illuminated sphere that is a touchscreen. It had a view of the solar system spinning around and when you touch it, it changes into the planet you touched or give info about that planet. pretty cool. 

Cosmos Centre, Charleville Qld

Fantastic globular screen solar system thing. Charleville Qld

Dobsonian Telescope. Charleville Qld

Dobsonian Telescope. Charleville Qld

We even went back for the night viewing, but the 6pm was cancelled due to cloud cover, so after a lengthy chat to a chaplain / astronomer who told us his life story in 45 minutes, we went to get dinner. Actually Lesley John Penrose turned out to be quite interesting to me as it turns out that he worked at the NSW Lands Department in late 60s early 70s in the mapping area and knew my long-lost mate Stuart Murray. Weird. Talk about your degrees of separation. It got worse. He went on to say that he was the first to buy a HP45 programmable calculator so he could do the trigonometric work in the field rather than sending it back to Sydney, and in doing so got picked up by NSW Treasury as a computer programmer. This is where I worked on the computerised tape to printer system, with which he was quite familiar. We must have been there in the Australia Square tower at the same time. Maybe even sat next to me into coffee shop eating Hawaiian Delights for breakfast and drinking strong coffee. He then got involved in the money-market boom of the seventies, and guess what, it's the reason I was furiously installing Wang systems as fast as they could be installed all over Sydney. Enough of the idle memory lanes stuff. Speaking of which, the Cosmos Centre is located at 1 Milky Way....

Dinner dispensed with we checked the sky and headed back to see if the 9pm session was a goer, which it was. We looked at the moon, we looked at Alpha Centauri, some nebula and the Jewel Box, all of which was interesting, even if it did sound like the identical script from 2013!

Up early today and headed out to a Date Farm. I wasn't expecting much, I thought they just grew on trees and someone picked the sticky things and shoved them in a box. 

It turns out that I was wrong and that our host had been doing this for 20 years or so and that it's very labour intensive and prone to all kinds of farming woes. He has 5 types of dates and 500 trees and apart from a very informative and interesting commentary, he's a real comedian as well, and kept us entertained for the several hours the tour took. We finished up sampling some date paste and date cordial and date liqueur, none of which grabbed me I have to say. But there was "oohing and arghing" all around the circle so they must have hit the spot. Judy has lips like a cat's backside, so I guessed she wasn't fussed either! We finished up with tea and coffee and ... date loaf.  All in an excellent experience, thanks Tom.

Date farm. Charleville Qld

Our host. Date farm. Charleville Qld

The start of new date flowers. Date farm. Charleville Qld

Moreton Bay Ash, aka Carbeen. Date farm. Charleville Qld

After the excitement of he Date farm, we went for a stroll through the Graham Andrews parklands, which is quite pleasant and has a few attractions, one of which is that its home to the Charleville Parkrun, AKA Graham Andrews Parklands Parkrun. More about that tomorrow as when it starts at 7am, I will be there. Two other attractions are, "The Big Red Seat", and the Vortex Guns that some 1902 snake-oil salesman said he could shoot special cloud seeding matter into the clouds and cause it to rain. Funnily enough, there is no report of his success or failure....

Judy sitting on the "Big Red Seat". Charleville Qld
Well.... it just had to done, right?

Mr Wragge's cloud seeding Vortex guns. Charleville Qld

Finally Judy had had enough excitement for one day, but I pushed on, there was the Historical House Museum and the "Oldest tree in town" still to see... I went, I saw I took some snaps but I won't bore you to death with them here!

I failed to mention one other new attraction: The Secret US Base. Charleville Airport was taken over by the US AirForce during WWII and became a part of the US of A for the duration. Apparently its existence was Top Secret, except for the 3,500 airmen stationed there and everyone one in own, and everyone that supplied them. Thirteen years ago, we joined a tag-along tour, starting from outside the old airport building and were lead on a lovely old drive around the old airport, runways, bunkers, remains of buildings and of course, the tiptop, top secret concrete box where they stored the bomb-sights for the bombers. But today there is a brand new hanger like facility that contains a really good display of WWII memorabilia, stories from and about the airforce base and a memorial to the local war heroes. Top marks to whoever came up with the idea and designed and funded it. 

US Secret Base, Charleville Qld

US Secret Base, Charleville Qld

US Secret Base, Charleville Qld

Norden Bomb sight. Charleville Qld
Image: random web sight, sorry

They still do the tag-along-tour, but we respectfully declined this time around.