On the Road again - Birdsville Trip - Day 15

 We left the smelly water of Quilpie and headed out again through mostly Mulga country. 

After about an hour we arrived at the Cooladdi Roadhouse. Two ladies are now renovating and running this. It is the smallest town on the longest road in Australia with a population of 2. We had morning tea there and a little wander around.

On the road again though countryside with more vegetation and more undulating country.

At Charleville our first stop was to the railway station which is also the visitor information centre and a Bilby Experience centre which has a nocturnal exhibit of live bilbys. I was fascinating to see that the Bilby is actually bigger than the chocolate Easter bilbys. It is worth noting that chocolate bilbys made by Pink Lady provide funds to the Save the Bilby Fund.

Photo by Kerrie

We were then driven to town for a bit of free time where walked the streets, had a light lunch and walked along the levee bank with Fiona and Cheryl until we did not want to walk any more. I even bought a skort. I hope it fits properly.

After lunch we drove to the WWII Top Secret Sites and met our tour guide who directed  where to drive to see the 3 featured sites and gave us a talk along the way.

Then we wandered through the display which had a lot of interactive exhibits about the influx of US airforce personel during WWII, explaining the effect they had on Charleville.

We were then dropped at our motel and had a few hours to catch up on chat and diaries before dinner.

I had contacted Jill from my Dino Dig trip via email yesterday and she actually saw the email and rang me while we were chatting. Unfortunately she was unable to come in for dinner.

After dinner we drove out to the Cosmos Centre for a star gazing evening. It was an amazing experience in a large building, the roof of which slid open horizontally. Then we were sitting under the stars and a 3/4 moon. We saw the Southern Cross then a nebula of tiny stars just to the bottom right of it. We looked at the twin stars of Alpha Centauri. Then we looked at Canopis, Antares in Scorpio and the moon with its craters and hills. We were also shown how to find True South using the Southern Cross and Pointers.