Day 10 Unsung heros

If you tried to mark the centre Queensland on a map you would probably land on Longreach. Similarly if you drew a line on a map from Rockhampton to Alice Springs, at the mid point, you would also find Longreach. While thinking about maps, if you labelled the Tropic of Capricorn on a map, it would also go through Longreach. Longreach is further from Brisbane, than Brisbane is from Sydney. It is a remote town literally in the centre of the outback, with a population of only 3000 people and can’t even support a Woolworths supermarket, yet Longreach boasts two very impressive tourist attractions.

The Stockman’s Hall of Fame is a tribute to the unsung hero’s who opened up the vast areas of inland Australia. The exhibits focus on social history telling the stories of individual people and the lives they led in these remote parts. Drovers who travelled for years moving stock from place to place, Aboriginal Australians who excelled as stockmen, pioneering women who did much more than keep house and even adventurous clergymen are celebrated in a museum with words, pictures, videos and interactive displays. After two or three hours at this remarkable museum we had only just scratched the surface. Sadly we missed the Outback Stockman’s Show as it isn’t held on a Monday.

Just across the road is another national treasure, the Qantas Founder’s Museum. Having just driven the very long distance from Darwin to Longreach we appreciated the need for a Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service. The museum celebrates the three young men who, upon returning from air service in WW1, scraped together enough capital to buy a plane or two. From those very humble beginnings grew an airline company and The Flying Kangaroo became the national icon that it is today. As we walked through the original 1920’s corrugated iron shed we could hear the roar of planes taking off. It was not a museum sound effect, but the real thing, as the runway of the Longreach Airport is right next door. To cap it off the museum has the only 747 Jumbo Jet on display in the world… Qantas, of course. Amazing!

Australian’s today often think we are doing it tough. A visit to Longreach is a tribute to those who have pioneered our country, both indigenous and European. Maybe we should stop whinging, work a little harder and remember the real unsung heros, who against extraordinary odds carved modern Australia out of the scrub.