Longreach to Hamilton Island

We woke early in Longreach to get into the day as we had lots to do, see the Qantas Museum, visit the Stockmans hall of fame, see the town and drive about 900km to Airlie Beach..we decided it was better to have a big day and just get there (Airlie Beach) than try and stay in a small town half way and drive again the following day..

Qantas founders Museum – what a great place, we did the 2 hr tour which takes you through the history of Qantas and a tour of an actual 747 and a 707 jet..( now for the history lesson, the airline was started here in Longreach in 1920 by fysh and McGuiness, they met during ww1 and had a vision of how much an airline would benefit northern Australia due to its remoteness. with a dream and lots of hard work Qantas was born). We thoroughly recommend the tour it was great. The museum has all the history of Qantas lots of virtual displays, video tours, exhibits etc really interesting for the kids and us.

Longreach – Picture an ideallic Outback Qld country town and this is it, it is such a pretty town. Great big queenslander homes, old classic pubs and a very “tidy town”.. But it was 1.00pm and we had quite alot of km to drive to get to Airlie Beach, as we had booked ourselves into Hamilton Island for a 4 night rest stop and to enjoy Christmas checking in at 3.00 the next day. Off we went heading straight into what felt like Cyclonic Rains, massive black clouds and raindrops as big as golf balls. This is fun we thought, lets see how the big bear handles this…Ok first the wiper on the passenger side decides to give up, that’s ok the drivers wiper is still working, next I feel some drops on my feet as we’re driving. The drops get more consistent, and now my feet are having a shower, that’s fine they need a wash anyway. This was an interesting drive as I had not seen this much water come down in such a long time, on top of all this you have massive 4 trailer road trains coming the other way, and these small “weird looking” wallabies which look like massive rats running across the road and adding to the road kill quota!

We got through the rain and landed in a little town called Jericho to recover, fix the bung wiper and dry off a little ..whilst here I noticed across the road was the local Town hall and what seemed like a little park next to it with a big billboard in front of it…Hang on that’s not a Billboard?? On closer inspection it was the local Drive In Theatre, WOW how cute was this, only small maybe 20 cars could fit here, plus it had seating undercover next to the projection room. What a classic, the kids were so amazed that people would actually sit in their cars and watch a movie ?.? Why, They asked? This place was like a step back in time it is obviously still being used every weekend but they hadn’t changed anything, weatherboard buildings, old style speaker to listen to the movie. It was great to be able show the kids a form of entertainment before DVD’s, and YouTube ..

Nighttime hits and we have about 400km to go, which is fine as the kids are all set up in the back and were ready to have nice night drive over the great dividing range and onto the coast. We come through an area which is very eerie at nighttime as all you see is what looks like little towns all lit up just off the hwy with roads and infrastructure all around us. We work out that these are massive open cut coal mines (Peak Downs Coal Mine) which obviously work around the clock, they are huge and go for miles, with coal trucks driving around us, trains with what seemed like kilometres of coal carriages heading to the coast to unload, and townships of renovated containers which are the workers accommodation neatly stacked row after row, very weird at this time of night. Mainly because you can’t actually see it properly as you drive through at night you don’t get a good understanding of what is out here, all we can see is the lights on what looks like craters of the moon, with massive machinery operating on them.

Finally we hit the coast and the big city of Mackay, we pull up for a stretch and more caffeine at the end of what must be late night Xmas shopping, you automatically get the stress vibes from people who are doing the mad Xmas shopping rush.We keep driving into the night which was great, as we are on the main Bruce Hwy on a balmy evening heading north until we finally hit Airlie Beach Campsite at about midnight, and just collapse to sleep!

We’re all looking forward to 4 nights on Hamilton Island to spend Xmas, the kids are excited to be able to visit the reef, and have fun on the island. I think quietly though, we all very excited about sleeping in beds for a few days and to have some space between us!

After reviewing our last few days we realised we had travelled 2700km since we left Alice Springs 3 days ago and made the most of what would normally be a boring straight road drive..so a few days on the Island we all thought were pretty well deserved! Aaah if only the weather thought the same, as they’re predicting showers!

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