So Sunday morning it was off to the Qantas museum. We got tickets for a museum entry and jet tour. The tour started at 9.30, so we did that first. Unfortunately there was a very cold wind that morning and we had to be outside for the jet tour (the jet was not in a hangar). We all had our jumpers on, but we wished we’d also taken our beanies. Anyway the tour went for one and a half hours, most of which was spent learning about and looking through the Boeing 747 200 series plane. Apparently it is the only one of this type on display in the world. We also looked through a Boeing 707 and heard about the great feat that it was to bring it back to Australia from South End in England. Michael and Sam probably enjoyed the tour more than the rest of us. I found it a little interesting, but would have been happy with half the time – certainly Hannah & Beth would have preferred that too, but they did well to be patient as long as they were. I actually found the museum more interesting than I thought I would – manly the history of Qantas and the stories of the men that founded it – I find these aspects more interesting than the technical information. There were some simulators and activities for the kids to do.
We got home about 1pm to have lunch (having had our own morning tea picnic in a windbreak area outside the museum). I was feeling pretty worn out and lay down to have a rest for a while. When it came time to head off to the Hall of Fame, I asked if I could opt out for the afternoon. So Michael took the kids to put in about 2 hrs worth of looking there. I rested for a bit longer, then did some typing on my blog. We had some milk and things we needed to top up on, so I decided to ride the big bike (the one we brought for Lauren – which is actually my bike – but I don’t use it much and she’d outgrown her old one) into town, which was only a couple of blocks away. It felt good to have some exercise. Neither of the 2 grocery stores were open – I guess being a Sunday in outback QLD, they still had the closed on Sundays philosophy. We had UHT milk and there was nothing else on the list that was urgent, so it didn’t matter. I went back to the van and decided I’d get parts of dinner ready early. When Michael and the kids got back, I asked who wanted to go for a bike ride to the park I’d found on my way back from town. Sam and Hannah said yes – Bethy wasn’t able to come as she was worn out and emotional. The 3 of us went and had a nice ride around on the bike for about 20mins. Then Sam went back to the caravan park and Hannah and I went riding a bit further along the road to where there was a nature walk. We walked along for about 10mins, but it was getting late, so we went back to our bikes and headed back to the caravan. We had a beautiful view of the sunset along the road, as there were no houses around us. Back at the van, Michael had put together the last of the dinner, so we were able to sit down and eat. We had live country music in the background as there was a guy playing his guitar and singing in the communal section of the park. He was quite good and quite a few of the ‘grey nomads’ were out listening to him. After dinner, it was the usual night time routine – showers, stories and bed. Just before leaving Canberra, we had found ‘The Betrayal’ book Sam and I had been reading a couple of months ago before it suddenly went missing. It’s quite a long book – an historical fiction about John Calvin. So I’ve started reading that again with Sam at night. I’m usually ready to go to sleep after I’ve read that with him.
The next morning we had to pack up the caravan as we were leaving that caravan park. Once packed up, we headed towards the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. We had found out that Michael had misread the website information and the only day the Stockman Show was not on, was Monday – today. It was bit disappointing, but one of the ladies at the caravan park the previous night had said the outback show at the Gold Coast was just as good – so maybe we’ll have to go to that sometime when visiting the Normans in Brisbane. Anyway, we filled in another 2 hrs at the Hall of Fame – I could have stayed longer, but the kids had seen enough between yesterday’s visit and today. I really enjoyed the early explorer gallery and pioneer Australians gallery. Sam and Lauren really enjoyed the stockman gallery right at the end, and also the RFDS gallery. Hannah and Beth enjoyed bits and pieces of all the galleries – the interactive parts mainly, like listening in to the types of conversations people had on the party line of the early telephone service, and the ‘talking head’ as they called it – an animatronic about the life of a stockman. We had some morning tea on the grounds outside the building and then hopped back in the car for the drive back east.