Today we visited the Qantas founders museum, which was unexpectedly extremely interesting! It gave the entire history of the men who started Qantas out of Longreach, the end of the railhead, and so the gateway to country very difficult to traverse by land transport especially in the wet! They had real vision to see the value of air transport in 1920, despite air travel being viewed as unsafe. I really enjoyed learning about the personal life of those involved. We then went on a separate tour of planes no longer in use-the DC3 , the Catalina Flying boat ( used for secret civilian missions during WW2 ( Douglas Dolphin), the Boeing 707 and the Boeing 747 , the latter 2 of which we were able to walk through.
We went to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. It was interesting to see the various main historical stock routes for sheep and cattle mapped out- the Canning Stock route from Halls Creek to Wiluna in WA, 1850km, the Murranji Track from Barkly tableland to Victoria River in NT, 650km, the Strzelecky Track from Lyndhurst to Innamincka in SA, 470km, and the Birdsville track from Marree SA to Birdsville Qld, 517km. These tracks now serve as vital biodiversity corridors, emergency grazing and 4WD rugged off road adventure tracks. It was also very interesting to learn what a large role indigenous stockmen played in opening up these routes, and yet how poorly they were paid.
The rest of the Hall of Fame was really just filled with Stockmen memorabilia.
I then wanted to visit the Stockman’s outfitters The Station Store, but found the goods sold there mainly for the tourist trade, not unexpectedly I suppose!
We had dinner at the Birdscage Hotel accompanied by beer and ginger beer.
FUN FACT: The Boeing 707 at the museum in Longreach went through various incarnations after finishing its stint with Qantas in the late 1960s. It was flown by other airlines before being refurbished as a luxurious private jet. The expectation was that it would be sold to an Arab sheikh. But the sheikhs shook when they did their due diligence. As one might expect, leather furnishings and upholstery were prominent. But it was all pigskin! The 707 eventually found an American home. And some years further on it was purchased by sheikhs after all, after the pigskin had been replaced.
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