Brrr, it's cold!

Cold, cold, cold at Charleville, particularly on Monday night when we had a wonderful hour with the telescopes at the Cosmos Observatory. Looking like Michelin men we wore coats, long trousers, boots, scarves, beanies/hoods, and gloves as the shed-like structure into which we were ushered had a curved roof that completely slid back, with groups clustered around each of 3 telescopes. The moon was still undergoing a partial eclipse so that was interesting; we had a close view of Saturn, as well as some other stars and clusters.

The transit of Venus tomorrow will be across the sun and there is a special day at the observatory, but we’ll be on the road by then.

Today we did the tourist thing, visiting the Royal Flying Doctor Service base’s visitor centre, enjoying the historic photos and documents. (Marlene: Found a pic of your Dad at work speaking into a microphone).



The rail ambulance.

Then we wandered a local park, list of native timbers in hand, finding the various trees; and finally, enjoyed a visit to the local historical society’s centre, and old house that was built as a bank and manager’s residence. It’s full of wonderful stuff, but one of the most interesting things was the rail ambulance. As we had seen in the past few days, dirt roads become impassable in the rain, while the railway line was built much higher. So this rail ambulance served the district between 1929 and 1965.

We used the caravan park’s laundry to do a big wash this afternoon before we head further west tomorrow to Quilpie and other much smaller places. We’ll probably start to do some bush camping, as long as this fine, cold weather continues