13-Aug-2007 |
|
Friday - 20th JulyPacked up and headed up the road to Barcaldine on the way to Longreach. We stopped in Barcaldine and visited the Australian Workers Heritage Centre; well worth a visit. Later we walked down the main street past the remains of The Tree of Knowledge reputed to be the birthplace of the ALP. We decided to overnight at Ilfracombe, a little town about 27k south of Longreach. We pulled into the Ilfracombe Caravan Park and found ourselves in a gem of a park. Jesse and Cathy make you feel hugely welcome. The park is undergoing continuing development and each night Jesse puts on a great show for happy hour in the Tin Shed. The fireplace is amazing, decorated with petrified logs and big enough to barbeque a bullock. It’s a tiny town but with a few great attractions, we wandered through the museums and displays of machinery, which I could play on, stretched along about a mile of one side of the highway before coming back past the bottle house, the interpretive Wellshot Centre, the artesian spa, the quaint general store, the historic post office and the Wellshot Hotel. In the afternoon we did a tour of the Langenbaker House where a couple of old pioneers had raised 11 children. It’s pretty well as the last member of the family left it. Happy hour was a hoot, with Jesse telling a wealth of jokes, his children reciting some great poems and one of the camp visitors entertaining us with music from his electric piano and piano accordion. Happy hour was still going at 7:30 when we went to the Wellshot Hotel next door for dinner. Jude had lamb chops and I had a huge steak, very tasty.
This site was last updated 24-07-07 |