Monday 21.5.12 Charleville

Firstly we have had a question about the comments you have written. They can be viewed underneath the previous blog (because we are doing the new blog there will be no comments as it is new.

The caravan park is lovely and shady and we are camped near a gully which is dry. It probably gushes with water in the wet. There are no mossies so we are happy. We rode 4 km again out to the info/space place. They have a great observatory, theatres and interactive displays.  We viewed a great show done a la star wars and we were the senators going on a journey. Very well done. A young man gave us an informative talk about meteorites. We got to hold a large piece found locally made of iron and it was extremely heavy. I assumed all were made of rock. Just goes to show what I don’t know really.

There we rode off to the Royal Flying Doctor exhibit. Very interesting and comprehensive. They had examples of past and present medical kits. Previous ones looked very gruesome and would encourage anyone to stay well. Also had one area set up as an old office for the calls to come in. The invention of the pedal radio and an automatic Morse machine were just as important as the planes for the service to operate. People are probably well aware of the pedal radio but the automatic Morse machine is one I had not heard of before. In the early days of the RFDS, all messages were by morse code and NOT voice communications. The people living on the outback stations had to learn morse code if they wanted to contact the RFDS. The auto morse machine was a type of typewriter connected to the morse code lines. When you typed a letter it sent out the correct morse code for that letter. Very ingenious and it cost 10 pounds per machine. Both the morse machine and the pedal radio had to be cheap.

People are not charged for the service but for every dollar raised the qld govt gives them $1.25. Then it was time for lunch back at the van.

As I sit here typing this there are two large kookaburras sitting across from us on a woodpile. One appears to have just found a worm to eat. They are very patient birds and just sit and wait. A huge flock of brightly coloured galahs have just flown out of the gully.

People find different occupations in the parks. Some paint, make jewellery and down the way from here ladies are knitting.

We spoke to a very interesting man. He is 75 years old and very fit looking and still takes 4 wheel drive tours all thru the desert and up to Cape York and anywhere else they want to go. Inexperienced groups he only takes thru knee- high water! Sometimes he sleeps in his vehicle and sometimes he takes a swag.

 We spent a lovely afternoon with Tony and Clare and then had a Chinese meal with them. They headed off before us today but we may cross paths again. Another thing we have noticed is that along the road there are toilets that are set high off the ground. We assume that is so it is harder for snakes and other animals to access them.

22 May 12

Today we went to the school of the air in Charleville. It was fascinating. We sat in the radio studio on a lesson. Fay even got to talk to the students – what a STAR. The teacher had a laptop and radio. All the kids had computers. The teachers and students get together in many more ways then what we expected.

Then we headed off to the local museum. This was set in an old bank building dating back to 1889. It was a bank. It is an old qldlander and they don’t get termites because they are made of cypress. It had a railway ambulance with railway wheels, because when roads impassable they would user the rail and they had a Furphy water cart dating back to WW1. Lots of other stuff too.

We made our way to Tambo going thru Augathela where we stopped for lunch.

Tambo is picture postcard of Queensland buildings and in the main street all the buildings have been refurbished with a coat of paint and they all are wheelchair accessible.

As we have State of Origin tomorrow night it only remains for us to find a safe haven at a pub where we can actually watch the match but we don’t expect to have too much NSW support with us. We have only had one night of TV in QLD. At least the Telstra phones are perfect as we have had coverage almost everywhere we go. Only on the long distances between towns do we lose some coverage. But every town has coverage.