07.08.07

CLONCURRY (day two)

I don’t think I will comment on the weather from now in as it perfect each day, reasonably cold in the mornings but perfect through the day. Did the washing etc and then picked up Debbie and Anthony Ferrari our newfound friends and explored the town and surrounds.

Visited the John Flynn Memorial museum which showed the history of the Royal Flying Doctor which Flynn founded here in Cloncurry in the early 1020’s. A very good display with a video of local content. Walked the main street and had lunch at the bakery our first for the trip.

Went to the local cemetery where the outstanding feature was the amount of young men that were buried there, a lot from accidents both on the land and from mining. (Afterward I felt a little bad about going there as the Ferrari’s had a son who came home from football and dropped dead, he was only 19. They appear to be quite philosophical about it all though. They have two other son’s who run their cattle property at Princetown near Warnambool. Really nice folk.) We also went to the sailyards where there were a lot of young cattle waiting to be shipped out by rail. There was a dead one lying by the ramp that had obviously died in transit, if I knew how dead it was I would have cut off a bit for the yabby pots but Mum wasn’t keen!

Visited the local water supply that had only been built in 1994, interestingly there were a lot of dead pelicans around it.

As part of the Flynn price ticket we went to another museum that was to do with the Mary Kathleen township. There were a great amount of mineral specimens in show cases but although Dad would have thought it great was not that interesting.

Did some shopping at Woolies and topped up with petrol at 121 cents and went back to the park and had drinks and nibbles with Debbie and Anthony and watched the sun set on a large rock outcrop near the park.