Day 4 - Emerald to Longreach
An early start to get to Longreach before the museums shut, I head off from Emerald around 8 am (okay, early is relative when its still single digits on the mercury and you're getting on a bike).
Quick Stats
- 4 hours on bike
- 416 km
- 1489 km total
Leaving Emerald, a surprisingly big hub (mining and timber it seems) and heading further west, we're well into colourful rock territory now. Turn offs for Sapphire, Rubyvale, and all manner of billboards about gemstones. I bet this place was interesting millions of years ago when volcanoes were producing all these rocks.
It isn't long before I get my next (and probably only for a long while) stint of twisting road.
The Drummond Range presents a short climb up to 451 metres. It's known for fozzilised wood and being about the only section of road and railway the isn't dead straight. Drummond is Greek for "beginning" as in the beginning of the central highlands. Or in my case, the end, as I'm leaving there and into the Central West.
Powering through, I reach Barcaldine. A place I knew nothing about. It was hard to miss the massive timber structure as you enter the town. The Tree of Knowledge stands as the meeting place of a bunch of shearers unions back in 1891. They assembled to organise a strike against the pastoralists of the time.
Reading the plaques, it seems the strike was a bit of a failure as scabs moved in and the leaders of the movement were jailed.
The members realised the problems with striking, but saw value of combined bargaining and decided to tackle it a different way: forming what would ultimately become the Australian Labor Party.
Anyway a pie and a look at the windmill, I booked some accommodation for the niggt and I was off on my way again to Longreach.
Arriving on the outskirts of Longreach, its hard to miss the Qantas Founders Museum.
The 747 looking all the more enormous in the sparse flatness.
That would have to wait till tomorrow morning though. I quickly checked into my cabin for the night, got changed and walked down for the Stockmans Hall of Fame.
The Stockmans Hall of Fame seems to be more of a bragging about early Jackeroos (and Jilleroos) than a detailed museum.
Beautiful building and some interesting stories, I got through it in a couple of hours and headed back to my cabin for some pork chops and veggies and an early night. And... maybe a bath.
