Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame

Wow.  What a magnificent place.
This is a museum with 5 themed galleries displaying some of Australia's greatest explorers, Aborigines, stock workers and pastoralists.
We strolled through the displays, but as the lady said at the counter on the way in, "You might need more than one day to see it all." Our old eyes found it hard to read some of the information as the lighting was a bit dim in places.  I will just show you some of the highlights.
It is a huge place.

Inside the displays included a traders wagon,

A huge bullock cart,

A wool press,

and a Furphy.

It also had lots of information boards and this one tells us the story of how a rumour came to be named a furphy.

Interactive displays told us about all manner of things.  This one was about pests and plagues with movies of mouse and locust plagues.

A pioneer kitchen. It is scary how much of this stuff is familiar to us.

A display of post office and telephone equipment.

After a cup of coffee, we all went outside to watch the outback show.  This man had some very funny jokes, and his horse was very well trained. Here he is lining the horse up to pick his hat up for him.

He rode around telling us stories and jokes.

Then he had some long involved story about jumping naked over the chairs. Something like bareback, no saddle, no bridle etc.

No saddle, no bridle, no horse...

No saddle, no bridle and no rider.

Then he brought his other horse over with some long story about how to ride a wild horse. He put a blanket on the horses back and the horse pulle it off. Then he put a saddle on it's back and the horse lay down because it did not want to be ridden.

After that story he brought out the camel.

And told another funny story about what the camel said.  Memory is a bit bad about this joke, but the camel told it very well. Here he is telling us the story.

Then he asked his dog to go and get some cattle.  He counted out on his fingers how many he wanted.

And here they come. They are very big and have horns.

They all lined up and he hitched them into a team, just like they used to do in pioneer days.

They walked out of the yard and he hitched them to a log, which they dragged back into the show ring. He showed us how easy it was to get the log onto the wagon.  Very interesting.

After the show we walked over and had a beefburger at the Cattlemans Bar and Grill.  We went back inside the Hall to finish looking at the exhibits. It was quite late when we left there and it does take a long time to get around and see it all.

Later that day after a rest at our unit, we went down to the Iningai Park Nature Reserve to hopefully spot some birds or wildlife. We did see some kangaroos, but they were a long ways off.  We chatted to an old man who had planted some red gums about 7 or 8 years ago.  He had a long term view of things as he said, "they will look really good in another 30 or 40 years time!"  There is no way he will last long enough to see that.  He told us he had seen emus with chicks at that spot yesterday, but of course there was no sign of them while we were there.  The men rested under a coolibah tree, while Judith and I did some exploring.

That was about it for that long day.  We are all sleeping well, but wake very early.

I hope you are enjoying my tales.  Tomorrow, I will show you some pictures of our trip to the Qantas Air Museum.

Bye for now and have a good day. 

Rubyvale to Longreach

Leaving Rubyvale early in the morning we headed west through towns I had never heard of before.  Places like Alpha and Jericho.  Jericho is on the Jordan Creek by the way.

We found our cycling friends again and stopped for a chat.  Megan’s Ride is the charity. Find it on Facebook .

Lots of long straight roads again and one car which kept in front of us for quite a while.

We stopped at Alpha for coffee and scones and sat at tables on the footpath outside the bakery and the cute little craft shop next door.

Alpha is known as the town of murals and we chatted to a lady at the information centre situated in the old railway station.  She directed us to the museum at the rear, which was full of dusty relics, but extremely interesting.  This looks like an old telephone system.

And this looks like the coal range we had in Havelock Street when I was a little girl.  Mind you, after 60 years I might be remembering the wrong thing.

This mural was painted by a man from Victoria, but it got damaged in the floods last year, so he came back and repainted it.

Leaving Alpha we found more long straight roads.

We saw our first emus grazing near the railway line at Jericho.  They are a bit hard to spot and we drove over the bumpy grass, but couldn’t get close enough for a good shot.

Into Barcaldine to see the Tree of Knowledge. Quite an amazing story. Read about it here. 

This is the main street of Barcaldine.  We had lunch at one of the hotels and found out that half a rump is not just a small steak, it means half of a whole rump and is about double the size of a normal steak.

Still in Barcaldine.

Then on the road again to stop at the Wellshot hotel. They don't serve coffee, but were happy for us to have a look.

On to Longreach where we are staying at the Discovery Holiday Park.  We felt the need to stretch our legs.  We were still feeling the effects of our rather large lunch so walked into town along this walkway.  The really good thing is all the information boards which tell us a bit of the history and what to look for.

We walked past the railway station at Longreach.

 And found ourselves at the Tropic of Capricorn.

We walked down the main street of Longreach and had a look in some of the shops, before  returning along the backstreets to our unit.
The main street of Longreach.

Tomorrow I will tell you about our visit to the Hall of Fame.
Bye for now....

Fossicking at Rubyvale

Sunday markets at the Sapphire Rugby Club grounds were a little disappointing for the stallholders.  All 10 of them.  However, we enjoyed looking at the assorted jewellery, old books and knick knacks.  The best part was talking to the stallholders. All very friendly and helpful. One couple had come from Mackay for a holiday and ended up buying a claim and staying on. 

We needed a coffee and found one at the Rubyvale Café, but the coffee there was a bit blah.  They had some lovely mosaics. This one was my favourite.

And this one was R's favourite.

Pretty good aren't they?

People from the markets had directed us to Armfest as a good place to do some fossicking, so after our coffee we headed back there to try our luck.  It was great fun. We drove up and it all looked hot and dusty, but we soon got into the swing of things.

We bought a bucket of wash and swished it up and down in the Willoughby.  The blue bins are full of water and the yellow contraption is what they call a Willoughby.

The big stuff stays in the top sieve and the smaller stuff falls through into the bottom sieve.  We tip the top seive upside down onto a mat on the table and go through it to find the gems.  This is the bigger rocks from the first seive.  Mostly just pet rocks!  In the orange lid, you can see some of the actual sapphires we have picked out previously. We found quite a few, but nothing that will make our fortune.

This is the final seive where we find all the small sapphires.

 Here is Judith sorting through the gems at the table, while the men are sitting in the shade for a while. It was extremely hot, but we were well prepared, with sunscreen, hats and long sleeved shirts. 

Here are Judith and Grant's haul of gems being sorted by Carol, the owner of Armfest Sapphires.  She was really helpful and taught us what to look for.  The gems are tipped onto a mirror which helps reflect the sunlight through the gems and makes it easy to see which are good ones and which are pet rocks. Don't you love that term. Pet rocks.  They seem to use it a lot when looking for gems.

We were very hot and thirsty after our fossicking, so headed back to the motel for lunch and a rest.  Later we went for a drive around the town.  It is an amazing place with lots of old machinery just rusting away where it sits.  There has been a lot of mining here over the years and the landscape is dotted with little humps everywhere.  The houses or structures are pretty basic. It seems people don’t have time to look after their properties, as they are too busy looking for the next big find. Do you think this place is closed?

The men were wondering?

We watched the rugby, well Judith and I didn’t have any option as the men were really involved in the game.  We hope the people in the next unit were watching the game as well otherwise they would be wondering at the noise.

Another early night ready for a day on the road.