Day 36 Friday 13th August 2010 & postscript

The obligatory cute furry animal at the campsite picture


The Tree of Knowledge monument


War memorial in Barcaldine

Greetings eager readers,
We have arrived at Longreach after travelling along the Roadkill Highway. Honestly i have never seen so many butchered animals in such a short drive. Most of them are roos but the highlight was a large steer that must have been over a tonne. The semi that hit it actually did brake and stop according to the marks on the road. Must have been a big job actually getting it off the road! The other noteworthy event today was that I managed to over take 2 road trains which are in excess of 50 metres long in spite of the terror filled admonitions from the passenger!
The day started with hot showers at the Blackall Showgrounds. The water is hot courtesy of the fact it comes from the artesian basin which probably explains why it smelt a bit sulphurous although it may have been the drains.
After a sojourn into town for a coffee and to take in the local sights which included a large fossilised tree stump 200 million years old we returned to the showgrounds and confirmed our booking at Lawn Hill park. We then achieved the world record camp packup time of 35 minutes.
In the early afternoon we arrived at Barcaldine where it was warm! Quite a pretty town with the highlight being the Tree of Knowledge monument which includes the now deceased tree, The Tree bore witness to the Shearers strike of 1891 which was the catalyst for the creation of the Australian Labour Party.
Another hour up the road we arrived at Longreach. As you enter the town you see large QANTAS planes at the side of the road in their museum. After a bit of mucking around we are esconced and mostly set up in the Longreach Sardine Caravan park. I don't particularly enjoy being able to lean out the doorway and touch my neighbours dwelling. Well they aren't quite that close but it is overly cosy. Plus we can hear the road trains thundering through about 400 metres away. What with that and people crunching over the gravel to the adjacent dunnies all night i think earplugs will be in order at bedtime. We had an adequate meal in the town grill shop and then proceeded to attend to our financial bookwork. Tomorrow we explore Longreach!

Cheers Simon

......POSTSCRIPT

Some interesting trees on the roadside with a look of snow coverage, also some shimmery pinkish gold grass. Simon is very patient with my requests to stop, inverably when he can stop the plants I am interested to see close up are nowhere to be seen, I was able to get a picture of the snowy trees, hope that Jeff or one of the plant society crew can identify the tree.

Barcaldine like many country towns has several pubs..... on our walk through town we read the historic information boards on about 5 of these, after the first two describing the rebuilding after fire, we laughed and commented to each other “s’pose this one (no 3) was burnt down too – and it was!, as was number 4 and 5. On reflection other pubs in Copley, Broken Hill, Charleville and Blackall had suffered similar fates..... should have kept a log..... wonder if we will find any that have not been burnt down???

Masonic Hall

The Masonic Hall was an interesting building in timber and iron. The front of the building restored in the 1980 was painted to look like stone (information did not say if this was a restoration of original or not) From the footpath I was unable to determine if the timber was formed into rhomboid shapes and painted on each face, what do you reckon?

Wall detail

Had lunch at the Barcaldine Bakery winner of best outback bakery prize 2009 and we know why! We had absolutely fantastic steak and pea pie (Simon) and curry pie (me) $4.50 each and about double the weight (at least) and three times the flavour of any other pie in recent memory, coffee was good too.

Susan