SYDNEY BROOME TRIP 2006

Saturday 29 April to Friday 5 May

Sydney to Longreach

Blog 1

We left Sydney late Saturday afternoon and got as far as Blackheath in the Blue Mountains on the Western Highway on the first day. The trees displayed beautiful autumn colours and the photos don’t really capture the golden tones we saw.

We then drove through Bathurst, Dubbo, Nyngan and Bourke all of which we have explored on a previous trip and so we really considered the start of our trip once we were north of Bourke on the Mitchell Highway, Monday.1 May.

Each town has its own claim to fame and a reason for stopping a little longer to explore. The rivers are always interesting to take note of. Nyngan is on the Bogan and Bourke is on the Darling. Barringun was the NSW/Queensland border town and we knew that we were in Queensland. The countryside was progressively greener and the houses were on stilts as we travelled north on the Matilda Highway. We saw LOTS of birds and animals including emus and their babies, kangaroos both dead and alive and an echidna and the usual sheep and cattle.

Our next stop was Cunnamulla on the Warrego river with a beautiful huge bronze statue of the Cunnamulla Fella and then on to Charleville also on the Warrego River. There is a lot of history in Charleville including the hotel of the first Greek licensee, the place where Cobb & Co coaches were built, Vortex Guns which were commissioned by the meteorologist Clement Wragge who tried unsuccessfully to induce rain from the clouds and finally a night at the Cosmos Centre looking through the fantastic telescopes at the observatory. So many more stars are visible and brighter out in the bush with no city lights brightening the sky.

Our next stop was Augathella, a tiny place, but we had to stop off and look at the “famous” Coolibah tree where the Kenniff brothers, bushrangers, tied up their horses and the mural drawn by a local artist of the wedding of Richard Fraser & Selina Britcher on the public toilet block. Our lunch stop was at Tambo on the Barcoo River and we couldn’t resist the cute little Echidna made from lamb’s wool from the Tambo Teddies workshop.

Our last stop for the day was Blackall also on the Barcoo River and we arrived in time to do the Wool Scour tour. It was a spectacular place. All the steam engines and machines had been restored and were in perfect working order. The water that is used for the steam engines is from the Great Artesian Basin and is pure enough to drink and bottle for sale. It comes out of the ground at 580C.

We stopped to look at the Jack Howe Statue. Jack Howe was a famous shearer who sheared 321 sheep in 7 hours and 40 minutes using hand shears: a record which still stands today.
We then saw the famous “Black Stump” which is the stump of a tree that was used as a surveying maker for the area. Anything west of this Black Stump was known as “beyond the Black Stump”.

Australian Workers Heritage Centre in Barcaldine traces the shearers union strike of the 1890’s and the start of the Australian Labor Party and the History of Australia’s working women.
A must stop was at Roses and Things for a lovely Devonshire Tea in a beautiful rose garden with hundreds of rose trees.

Our last stop in Barcaldine was the Tree of Knowledge which is the tree under which the striking shearers gathered and subsequently formed the Australian Labour Party.

The city of Longreach, on the Thomson River and on the Tropic of Capricorn, beckoned and off we went. The Stockman’s Hall of Fame is superb and you can easily wander for hours learning about drovers, the outback, cattle Barons and explorers for all of Australia.
Longreach is also where Qantas started and we explored a 747.

A sunset river cruise on the Thomson Belle, a paddleboat on the Thomson River followed by a camp dinner was a perfect end to our stay in Longreach.