Day 25 Tuesday 11th July

Today we headed off to The Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame. It’s only about a few hundred metres from our Caravan Park and the QANTAS Museum is across the road from it. The building the museum is housed in, is very impressive. There were 6 major galleries with topics like Our Story, Pioneers, Outback Properties, The Royal Flying Doctors, Stock Workers, and an Art gallery. There are 3 small theatres and many areas where videos and old films are shown. The displays are spread over 5 levels and there are huge displays including a full-size plane, an old cottage, farm equipment, blacksmith shop, etc. We spent a couple of hours in here and just touched the surface before we went out of this building to the Outback Entertainment Centre, a huge 76 metre long and 46 metre wide undercover area with tiered seating. We had been booked in to see the “Outback Stockman’s Show” at 11am. This was an entertaining show by a stockman who explained many things about working on the land over the years as a ringer. He also talked about how important the horses were on the stations in the past and to a small extent still are but also acknowledged that now motor-bikes and planes and helicopters are used to a great extent. He had a beautiful old horse that played along with his comedy act, a brahma bull, a lovely collie dog that was a star and then the very young (8 months old) kelpie who did a fantastic job rounding up some sheep. This demonstration was so entertaining and impressive. For a young dog, he understood all the commands and just wanted to work. In fact the stockman explained that with most kelpies you have to stop them from working at times or else they kill themselves from overworking. The stockman did a great demonstration of shearing a sheep as well. After the show we headed into town for some lunch and then returned to the museum to complete the galleries we still needed to view. We thoroughly recommend this experience to anyone who makes it up to Longreach. Well worth it!



















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