Longreach sightseeing on Friday 13th July2012

In the morning we visited the School of Distance Education, or "the School of the Air" at Longreach in outback Queensland. This place looks like a normal primary school complex on the edge of town, only it is so quiet; no sounds of any children can be heard! They are all scattered around on outback cattle stations and other remote places, doing home schooling.

There were 2 tour sessions daily and both were fully booked out; we were in the 2nd group along with a room full of other grey nomads and one young family with little kiddies. This School of the Air is a classroom more than twice the size of Victoria and it caters for outback children who are being taught usually by their mothers on outback farming stations. Teachers have brightly coloured little rooms set up where they communicate with their young students via computer set ups and phones. We saw the old equipment that used to be used, and how today the computers have made distance education so much more interactive and happier. The kids are able to come into the School of the Air a couple of times a year for special events where they get to meet others their own age and they touch base with their teachers. There are special quarters set up for the children to stay a few days. The teachers also do travelling visits to outback stations to meet their students and to help their home tutors. It must be hard for the mothers, as they don't get paid to be teachers of their own kids, and they also have so many other farming jobs to do. Dave and I were impressed with the standard of equipment used at the School of the Air; the facilities are designed to try and give isolated children very good education opportunities, including an extensive library/equipment system that is sent out every 6 weeks. We were able to see the children in videos, some of their work and also lots of happy photos of them doing all sorts of things. A lot of them ride horses! One rule for us tourists was that we were not allowed to take any photos of the kids as this breaks privacy rules. Fair enough. While I was on the tour I found myself missing our twelve grandchildren terribly! Seeing all the other lovely little ones on air was causing this.

Afternoon sightseeing

After our educational experience, we walked to the Stockmans Hall of Fame. This is a huge complex and well worth the $22 each Seniors entry fee. As usual the staff had to chase us Mighty Intrepids out at 5pm closing time!

We are pleased we are not travelling up the Queensland coast at the moment, as it is raining non-stop and uncommonly cold. Even the flat country of central areas is cold but the rain has eased off here, leaving lots of big pools of water, and the countryside looks lovely and green.

Saturday 14 July: QANTAS Founders Museum, Longreach.

We started a rural town Saturday morning by walking the long main street of Longreach looking for a birthday present for one of our darling granddaughters, who will be 6 soon. We could've bought her a little cowboy hat, a small drizeabone long coat or any other kind of horsey gear but Dave wasn't sure his little girl would like that. People round here ride horses and/or small farm motorbikes. We eventually found something good for her at a camping store!

Then it was off to explore the Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Service museum. There is a range of entry prices ranging from reasonable to stupid, and I noted that a lot of the grey nomads were easily talked into the stupid entry fee because they could then go on a tour of one of the big planes and do a "wing walk". Woopy do! The Mighty Intrepid cheapskates went for the Seniors $16.50 entry fee which got us a very good afternoon seeing just about everything in our own sweet time, without an airplane wing walk. We were very impressed with the way a huge airline was originally started by a small handful of people with courage, tenacity and great vision, in the outback of Queensland, just after World War 1,(2 former pilots of little bomber planes) flying the scariest looking little bi-planes where the pilot sat outside in a tiny cockpit. The first Qantas plane had passengers sitting open to the elements too; the enclosed plane for passengers came a little later! I came away thinking that to be a success with what you want to do with your life you need to have a great imagination, faith in your dreams, skill and determination, not letting discouragement put you down. And keep working with only the best people around you; they turn up at just the right moment and prove their abilities, so loyalty and trust with them is important.

It started raining again here, and became freezing cold too in "the Sunshine State". Just as well we had a nice cosy cabin to go back to, where Dave cooked up another one of his hot spicy Asian satay meals. Yum! We are packed up all ready to go tomorrow morning on a nice easy ride 180km to the next town of Winton, to explore dinosaur fossil country.