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.

 

Charleville Day 2, June 1, 2016

Charleville Day 2

Did nothin’.  Well almost nothing all day, just resting, getting ourselves ready for The Big Night.Yes folks, tonight is the weekly running of the almost famous Bailey Bar Crustacean Cup, a short dash over 1 metre for crustaceans of the yabbie family. You get an entry when you buy your dinner ticket, so not only do you get to go to the races, but you get fed as well.

I’m not sure what was in the cauldron over the fire, but i’d have to assume its the remains of last night’s lamb-on-a-spit dinner, which we chose to forgo.

However there is no escaping the Cup, so we duly took our places in the ring and after a good feed of hot-pot, mash and damper, the lights went up and the contestants released into the containment area. The flag dropped and they were off, well they could have been off but then they don't exactly move like startled rabbits. Some just sat and did nothing, most followed the biggest one and broke into a slow crawl toward the winner’s line.

The yabbies were bundled off to race another day and the track put away while we fed our faces on The Pud, which might have been apple pie and custard, I’m not so sure. I and sure about the Tea: black and super strong, flavoured with a few dozen Lemon Scented Gum leaves which completely overpowered any actual tea involved.  The nearby tree received a watering, one cup at a time.

Not to worry, all a bit of fun and in aid of the Aussie Helpers Charity, which was started here in Charleville to help the local farmers through the interminable droughts. They say it's now huge and helps heaps of farm families get over the hard times.

Judy all set for the Charleville Crustacean Cup

Billy's on the boil...

The odds have gone up. That's us on Strictly Crawling

Our hosts hard at work

Here we are in the ring. All's set ready for action

Ah! A nice big plate of mash and slops!

Add a hunk or two of damper and you've got a meal

The yabbies are lines up at the barrier...

Their off!

Well some of them are off, the rest looked more like dead-dogs. I have no idea where our  fancy came, once 13 crossed the line they were stopped up and back into the tub ready for next week.

Charleville Qld, May 31, 2016

Charleville Qld, May 31, 2016

Pretty much a repeat of yesterday’s travel, a 250km run from Bourke to Cunnamulla, lunch in the only cafe in town and the afternoon stint of 200km up to Charleville. Somewhere north of Bourke you cross into Queensland and immediately loose the 110km limit, back to 100km. Not that I care, I’m happy around the 100kph +10-5) mark, it’s just that nothing changes: not the road, not the land, not the speed of the people using the road... and yet one government thinks 110 is too fast and slap a 100 limit on. Actually, 20km or so over the border and it went back up to 110, and again, nothing changes.

That was almost the highlight of the trip. The real highlight and point of discussion was the carnage on the road in the form of road-kill. Roos, emus, pigs, you name it. It kept me awake weaving in and out and around the carcasses, i sure wouldn't want to actually hit one at that speed, dead or alive. I have to assume it’s trucks at night that do the damage or else the place would be littered with dead cars a well. Mind you, the emus were everywhere, and in big mobs. These things are so unpredictable you just have to be ready to take evasive action all the time.

Made it into Charleville unscathed and have settled into Bailey Bar Caravan Park. Don't ask me why its called Bailey Bar, I can only vaguely remember something about it once being a dairy or something and am a) too tired and b) too lazy to go to the office and find out. And besides, the campfire entertainment is getting started, they have a roast lamb on-a-spit for $23 that looks a lot like the aforementioned road-kill and country music, I might just sit here and play on the inter web for a while.  OMG, is that yodelling?

I just looked up our blog entry from 2013 when we were here last and laughed my head off; everything is the same, including the road-kill and with the exception of the w***** with the Christmas music blasting out isn't here [Praise the Lord] and being a Tuesday, there’s no footy match to go and watch instead.

Sadly it clouded over on the way up here so the star gazing at the info centre has been cancelled and the once free self-guided ‘secret’ tour is now a pay-as-you-go tour and having done it before, I opted out.

Charleville III

Off to the pub!

We went on the Scones and Story tour of the Hotel Corones this afternoon. The Hotel was originally the Hotel Norman until bought by Haralambos (Harry) Corones, an enterprising young fellow from Greece, in 1924. Harry had come to Australia with nothing except his 12yo cousin Dimitris and after a few years in Sydney and Brisbane, moved to Charleville to buy a cafe that was for sale. He was soon co-opted into taking on the Charleville Hotel, but later bought the Hotel Norman and transformed it into his vision of elegance and splendour. Much later, he bought the Charleville as well to add to his portfolio of some 10 hotels.

The tour is run by the information centre people, our guide being the great granddaughter of the builder engaged by Harry to build his dream. Lovely tour, got to see a whole lot of the hotel, the bar, the rooms, the very room where QANTAS was hatched, the dance hall and ended up with tea and scones in the dining room. Fortunately the whole place is now heritage listed and some amount of restoration is being undertaken.

We also looked through the 'Historic House' museum, which had some interesting things, but these places always leave you feeling a little disappointed, as if you've wandered into a junk shop, notr a museum.

Last thing, we drove out of town 10k to the 'rock pool'. Don't know anything about it except that it's just off the road and may well have been a quarry. The water was frigid of course, but i'll bet its a big hit with the locals during summer.

I've added more snaps to the Charleville tag on the right, but here is the obligatory snap d'jour:

Charleville II

History Lesson today

I went and joined a 'convoy' in the morning. It was a guided tour of the area around the airport, which during WWII had been taken over by the USAF and converted into a top secret Air Force base (no wonder you've never heard of it!).

Charleville was chosen because it was too far inland to come under naval attack or air attack (remember: the bombing of Darwin is very fresh in their minds, as is the USAF getting wiped out in the Philippines). Anyhow they brought a reputed 200 B17 'Flying Fortress' bombers and 3 1/2 thousand servicemen into town and proceeded to upgrade the airport and everything else around town. The Top Secret turns out to have been the use of the super top secret Norden bomb aiming sight, basically a mechanical, clockwork, analogue computer. So top secret that the few they had were housed in a special bunker, kept under armed guard 24 hours a day, escorted to a plane selected at random, and not uncovered until that plane was well airborne. Supposed to have been accurate to within 100ft from 21000ft. There is some doubt about that claim. They were designed by a Dutchman and assembled in the USA from parts made in neutral, but surrounded by axis forces, Switzerland, and smuggled out to the USA. So much for 'good old American know how'.

Anyhow, all the land they took at the airport became USA soil for the duration. When they left, they were supposed to hand the land back as they had found it, and they did what they normally do, bulldozed everything they had constructed, dug holes and buried the lot. That was in 1942. Nobody gave a toss until a few years ago when council, who owns the land, decided to sell it off for industrial development. Only then did someone raise their hand and say, 'Oi, isn't there a WWII bunker in there (mallee scrub) somewhere?' And sure enough they started to poke around and found all kinds of things, then they started asking the oldies in town, then they started asking the USAF. A group from the Cosmos centre / Information centre / beating heart of town put together a tour of the bits they had found and council much to everyone's surprise, agreed to save it and moved the factories somewhere else. The immediate bits of history are: an airport in the middle of nowhere that can handle the largest commercial planes because its got a giant runway, direction beacons, B17 sized hanger that RFDS now calls home, the original 'aid station' (base hospital) and a bunch of concrete footings for buildings such as the kitchen and toilet blocks, fully reticulated water supply and underground sewers running throughout the scrub.

One of the stories they tell is about how the local hospital was built by the Americans, a yarn they picked up from the hospital tour guides. The current airport manager, who is keen enough to have had the aid station repainted to original colours and is now his home, was poking about the hospital and found the original foundation stone: 1939, 3 years before the yanks turned up. One popular and long term myth bites the dust. The hospital however, was completely remodelled and enlarged by the US to meet their needs, so the town has a fantastic hospital as a legacy as well. 

Every year these enthusiasts find more remains in the bush and extend and enhance the tour. They are now organising a proper archaeological dig team from one of the Universities: the pot of gold is a complete Kittyhawk aircraft supposedly buried on site somewhere.   Good luck to them.

Another thing of interest to me is that all this building etc was done by what they refer to as 'Australian Essential Workers' aka the Civil Construction Corps, and of which my father was a member, but he probably never came here. But then again, it was Top Secret...

Once again, as it did last year, we are struck by just how little the Australian public, either at the time or now, knew about how involved in the war we were on our own soil.

A snap of the only remaining hanger (others were dismantled and sold, most ending up as military museum hangers :

WWII Hanger fit for a B17 Bomber. Now Royal Flying Doctor Service, Charleville, Qld

Charleville, Qld

Time to mosey on up the road. You hitch the van on, pull out straight onto the Mitchell Highway and maintain speed for the next few hours. We stopped after 250k at the first town, Cunnamulla, in Qld, (not the first name, that would be Engonia or Barringun) for an early lunch and because we just had to have a break. The driving is flat and mostly straight through scrubby country. The only noticeable thing is the fauna wandering along the road: sheep, goats, cows, emus, roos, pigs. The raptors were having a field day, selecting only the most ripe and juicy while ignoring others. In Cunnamulla we had toasties and coffee and took time to snap the world famous Cunnamulla Fella (what? you've never heard of him? shame, shame shame). Nothing for it but to push on up to Charleville, another 200 or so kays up the road. I have to say that the roads at this stage are far better in Qld than NSW, but no lessening in animals looking to be the next Eagle Boys meal. Somewhere back near Bourke we encountered 'traffic' in the form of ute and two caravans, who were dawdling along at 90. I played the game, for a while but eventually slid by them. I am really happy about how this rig sits on the road.

After Cunnamulla, well, well after Cunnamulla, we came across more traffic. This time two vans doing 80 right behind each other and about a 100m back from another pair. We sat and waited. It was just off-putting. The brakes lights would flash and they'd slow down more and move entirely across to the other side of the road as they avoided yet another carcass on the side. I was getting 'toey' with them. At one overtaking opportunity two large cattle trucks came into view coming the other way and then the radio crackled into life, 'Yair mate, we got caravan heaven coming, lets see if we can bowl 'em off the road etc etc', and they both moved in toward the centre of the road trying to put the frighteners on the others. I hung back and held my place. It's the devil in me. After they had passed we hear the first truck say to the other in a shocked voice, 'Mate, I think we got a two finger salute coming back at us!' Their day would have been made when a silken female voice informed them that indeed they had and that they surely deserved it. Didn't hear a peep after that. Ah the beauty of true mobile communications.

Made it into Charley and found our spot at the Bailey Bar Caravan Park. We were immediately driven out by some w***** playing Christmas carols and other god squad numbers full blast. We went to the info centre and booked a few shows and things, starting tonight at 9pm with a visit to the Cosmos Centre to look at stars and things through a big telescope.

Returned to the van park after a lap of town but went around to the back entrance just for fun. A football match was in full swing at the ground behind us so we simply drove in and had a look. The Charleville Comets were giving the Quilpi Quails a flogging. Serves 'em right.

Anyhow enough already, and I'll try and remember to hit publish this time, eh?

Here's a snap of some weeds on the side of the road:

Weeds. Charleville, Qld