Author Archives: ouraussiehome

Our last morning in Longreach we made a quick stop to take a picture of their Tropic of Capricorn monument (statue? marker?).  We parked our caravan next to this very Australian-looking old train station. We crossed the street in front of this interesting water tower.  You might be fooled into thinking that tree is blossoming with big white blooms, but in reality all those blooms are moving… Because they are birds.  Corellas.  Heaps and heaps of noisy corellas.  We’d seen … Read More

In Longreach we stayed at a very busy caravan park. No grass in sight which is common for much of this part of Australia!  The first night we were there we were very lucky to be approached by a pair of brolgas.  I was fascinated.  They weren’t shy and were obviously hoping for a handout.  They approached several people and were not afraid to come right up to us.  They are so big!  It’s so strange to have these creatures … Read More

After our lovely tour of the planes we had a look through the Qantas Founders Museum.  The museum is not run by Qantas, it’s a not-for-profit organisation. The museum tells the story of the founders of Qantas. (Okay, that’s obvious from the name.)  It’s an excellent museum with so, so much information.  There were four founders, the museum is full of information on them and how Qantas came to be. The original (now heritage listed) Qantas hangar still stands.  We … Read More

Driving into Longreach from the east you can’t miss the 747.  It sits just off the main highway and it looks so huge in this small town.  We had told the kids there was a Qantas museum in Longreach that we would be going to and as soon as they saw the plane they were asking if we’d get to go inside it.  I cringed a bit, knowing the tour was going to be out of our price range.  Museum, … Read More

One morning during our stay in Rubyvale, Dad walked outside and attempted to enjoy a mandarin.  He was suddenly assaulted by rainbow lorikeets who apparently like mandarins!  We all came out to have a look and we soon gathered a good number of them. TurboBug really wanted to hold the birds but wasn’t too keen on it when it happened.  A bit of panicking but he was fine once we coaxed the bird away. LadyBug found them a bit scratchy … Read More

After Mackay our next major stop was to be Longreach.  To break up the drive a bit we spent some time in Rubyvale.  We don’t often arrive at our destination after dark, but this night we did and during a lovely thunderstorm, too.  That made for some interesting driving.  We prefer not to be on the road at dusk because of the risk of kangaroos who are more active that time of day and thus more likely to become roadkill.  … Read More