Dead Things
A farmer by the name of David Elliott found a large (of course it would be large) dinosaur thigh bone on his Winton, Qld property back in 1999. He quickly despatched it to the museum folk in Brisbane and a … Continue reading Dead Things
A farmer by the name of David Elliott found a large (of course it would be large) dinosaur thigh bone on his Winton, Qld property back in 1999. He quickly despatched it to the museum folk in Brisbane and a … Continue reading Dead Things
A bunch of us drive over to Fisherman’s Landing cafe at Balgal Beach for lunch. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, the cafe is a few hundred metres from our caravan but it is a 14km drive away owing … Continue reading Fisherman’s Landing, Balgal Beach
At Jondaryan Woolshed on the Darling Downs of Queensland we don our winter woollies and gum boots and join a bunch of Japanese school kids, teenagers, for a sheep shearing demonstration using hand shears. The poor old sheep is being shorn for the first time and doesn’t utter a single baa. Interesting to us is that all discussion by the teachers is in English and there is a bit of English instruction bandied about “one lamb, two lambs, one sheep, two sheep, no S.” Then we learn that if a sheep is shorn with wet wool the wool will self … Continue reading A Lesson in Ovine Plurals
The Jondaryan Woolshed was built between 1859 and 1861 and was once part of the Jondaryan Estates pastoral empire which in the 1890’s encompassed 300,000 acres and was the largest freehold station in Queensland. Nowadays it’s a working museum run … Continue reading Not Your Average Caravan Park
The Trial Bay gaol, near South West Rocks in NSW, was built to house the convicts that were to build the bay breakwater. After many years this task proved too difficult and the gaol was closed. In World War One … Continue reading Trial Bay Gaol
Greenmount Homestead at Walkerston, inland from Mackay, was built by the Cook family a hundred years ago and with no descendants to carry it on the homestead was given to the community of Mackay, with the proviso that the last … Continue reading Greenmount Homestead
Both the church and a restaurant in Denham, WA are built from shell grit bricks called Coquina.Behind the dusty caravan park at Hamelin Pool is the shell grit quarry where the bricks have been sawn since the 1800’s. They still … Continue reading Shell Grit
Roma is the home of the bottle tree. Not to be confused with the Boab and more consistent in their shape, Bottle trees live to a very old age and it is said that trees that were recorded by the … Continue reading Roma Bottle Trees
In a sea of white shell grit the old telegraph station at Hamelin Pool in Western Australia is where in 1964 a Mrs O’Donohue tirelessly transmitted morse code for NASA during the first Gemini launch. Lightning had taken out the … Continue reading Hamelin Pool Telegraph Station