Western Queensland is a fascinating part of Australia. It’s where the ethos of the bush was created, in towns like Longreach, Charleville, Blackall, Barcaldine and Winton. Here lived the poets, shearers, stockmen and entrepreneurs who defined our national character in the nineteenth century.
There are two ways to explore this part of the country. If you’re heading to Queensland from the southern states, you can simply follow the Matilda Highway, a tourist route which starts just over the NSW/Qld border north of Bourke and runs north-west through all of these towns on its way to the Gulf.
Alternatively, you can base yourself in Longreach for a week or so, and take day trips. Charleville, the most southerly town in the region, is a bit far from Longreach to visit in a day though.
The plains around Charleville, the "Queen City of the West" were taken up by selectors in the 1860s. Cobb & Co opened a factory here in 1886 after its coaches built from southern seasoned timbers cracked in the heat, and the distinctive white livery with red lettering rolled throughout outback Queensland until 1924. Sadly the factory burned down in 1980. Worth visiting in Charleville are the Outback Queensland Skywatch observatory, the Royal Flying Doctor centre and the historic Corones Hotel and former Queensland National Bank, now a museum.
On the Mitchell Highway in Bicentennial Park, as you enter Charleville from the south, is the Stiger Vortex rainmaker gun. This 5.4 metre high conical device was one of six fired at cloudless skies in 1902 by a Professor Clement L. Wragge, a meteorologist who convinced the local council that, loaded with explosive and lit all at once, these German designed pieces could somehow disturb the atmosphere enough to break a six-year drought.
Two of the guns exploded, the Chinese market gardener's horse went berserk and scattered fruit and veg from the cart as it tore around the streets, no rain came and Mr Wragge left an irate Charleville in a hurry.
Blackall, 300 km north of Charleville on the Barcoo River, was home to Jack Howe, the gun shearer who in 1892 is reputed to have shorn 321 sheep in seven hours and forty minutes (with blade shears) at nearby Alice Downs station.
He is commemorated with an impressive statue in town, and the blue "Jacky Howe" singlet, still popular among today's shearers. Near the Howe statue is a replica of the original fossilised Black Stump.
There's plenty of Jack Howe and shearing memorabilia on display at the Universal Hotel, a replica of the pub which Howe owned in his retirement. Four kilometres from Blackall is the last remaining steam-driven woolscour, built in 1908. It is being restored and there are several tours each day.
One hour's drive (106 km) north of Blackall is Barcaldine, on the Tropic of Capricorn. In the 1890s, Barcaldine figured prominently in the Great Shearer's Strike. The Queensland Shearer's Union was angered at government endorsed reductions in their pay and working conditions demanded by graziers, and the employment of the hated "scabs" when the strike commenced. In 1891, they met to discuss tactics under a ghost gum in front of the railway station; the "Tree of Knowledge", so called because of its witness to these meetings, is still there, now surrounded by bougainvillea. Thirteen shearers were jailed for their part in organising the strike; this hastened the formation of a political wing of the union which went on to join similar organisations in other states and became the Australian Labor Party.
Barcaldine’s role in these events gained it the Australian Workers Heritage Centre, a bicentennial project which traces the history of organised labour, and the lives of working people in the bush, in a series of exhibitions. The shearer's strike is well represented, with great photographic and documentary coverage.
Longreach, 107 km west of Barcaldine, is the largest town in Western Queensland.
The Stockman's Hall of Fame, opened in 1988, takes you on a fantastic journey through outback Australia, from the culture of the indigenous occupants, the exploration and opening up of the west to pastoralism, the skills and lifestyles of shearers, drovers, stockmen and cattle tsars like Kidman, plus the hardships and pleasures of daily life for the men and women who tried, not always with success, to make a go of it in this tough environment. The historical aspects of the Hall of Fame are well linked with equally impressive exhibits on outback life today.
Just across the highway, at Longreach airport is the QANTAS Founders’ Outback Museum.
QANTAS was conceived in Cloncurry, born in Winton and took off in Longreach. The museum is housed in the hangar used as the company's headquarters from 1921 to 1930. Here, co-founder Hudson Fysh organised the fledgling airline's schedules while his mechanics kept performing miracles of maintenance to meet them, and actually built several QANTAS aircraft. A beautiful replica of the company's first plane, an Avro 504K, is the centrepiece of the museum, but many of the engines, aircraft parts, tooling and office fittings on display are original.
Several tour operators can show you more of Longreach, from cruises up the Thompson River, to station visits, stargazing, aboriginal art sites and bush theatre. The tourist information centre in Eagle Street has all the details.
Across the relentlessly flat plains west of Longreach on the 175 km drive to Winton, the horizon takes on a straight line outback perspective; as you enter Winton, the wide uncrowded streets, old time architecture and time-standing-still atmosphere is a sharp contract to busy, modern, manicured Longreach.
There is some conjecture about the events described in the song "Waltzing Matilda", but at Winton's Waltzing Matilda Centre this unofficial anthem is brought to life.
A recreation of the waterhole scene uses sophisticated audio visual techniques, complete with ghostly narrator, to tell the story; the song's significance and the lifestyle and influence of the swaggie in Western Queensland complete with a wonderful dictionary of swaggie vernacular are also covered in a series of fascinating exhibits. After visiting the centre, you can have a cold one in the North Gregory Hotel, where Waltzing Matilda was first performed in 1895.
The real story, however, took place a bit further up the track towards Cloncurry. Banjo Patterson was staying at Dagworth station near Kynuna, 165 km north-west of Winton, when he was told about Samuel Hoffmeister, a shearer who during the 1891 strike was reputedly involved in burning down the Dagworth woolshed and had leaped into the nearby Combo waterhole rather than be captured.
Christina McPherson, who lived at Dagworth, was looking for a lyric to suit an old Scottish tune she liked, and after a picnic at Combo, Patterson was sufficiently inspired by the shearer’s “they’ll never take me alive” philosophy to provide it.
Thirteen kilometres before you reach Kynuna, you will see a left turn sign to Combo Waterhole Conservation Park. Eight kilometres of easy dirt road brings you to a small picnic area by the Diamantina River; the Combo waterhole itself is a 20 minute walk away.
“And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong.” However, apart from the hapless Hoffmeister, the rest of Australia’s colourful pastoral history is still very much alive in Western Queensland.
Longreach is 1,175 km north-west of Brisbane via the Warrego and Landsborough Highways. It is 960 km north-west of Bourke in NSW, via the Mitchell and Landsborough Highways, together designated the “Matilda Highway” tourist route.
Royal Flying Doctor
Service visitor centre Old Cunnamulla Road,
Charleville Open seven days, 9am - 5pm
Phone: (07) 4654 1233
Outback Queensland
Skywatch observatory Airport Drive, Charleville Two shows nightly.
Phone: (07) 4654 3057
Blackall Woolscour
Short Street, Blackall 8am - 4pm daily from April - November
Phone:(07) 4657 4637
Australian Workers Heritage Centre
Ash Street, Barcaldine
Mon - Sat 9am - 5pm; Sun 10am - 5pm
Phone: (07) 4651 2422
Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame
Landsborough Highway,
Longreach Daily, 9am - 5pm
Phone: (07) 4658 2166
QANTAS Founders Outback Museum
Landsborough Highway,
Longreach Daily, 9 am- 5 pm
Phone: (07) 4658 3737
Waltzing Matilda Centre
Elderslie Street, Winton Daily, 8.30am - 5pm
Phone: (07) 4657 1466
Lark Quarry Environmental Park.
Dinosaur footprints from a stampede 93 million years ago, preserved in rock.
210 km south-west of Winton
Guided tours available & recommended.
Contact Winton Visitors Information Centre.
Phone: (07) 4657 1466
Charleville Visitor Information Centre
Cunnamulla Road, Charleville.
Phone: (07) 4654 3057
Blackall Visitor Information Centre
Short Street, Blackall.
Phone: (07) 4657 4637
Barcaldine Information Centre
Oak Street, Barcaldine.
Phone: (07) 4651 2243
Longreach Tourist Information Centre
Qantas Park, Longreach.
Phone: (07) 4658 3555
Waltzing Matilda Centre
Elderslie Street, Winton.
Phone: (07) 4657 1466
January: 22 - 36C
July: 8 – 23C
Western Queensland can be very hot in summer, which is also when the northern areas receive most of their rainfall. Other seasons are more temperate and dry, and better times to visit the area.
4WD
