We are embarking on a trip out to Central Western Qld so Dougie can show us where he lived and worked in his younger days and also so he can reminisce about his footballing days, when he played for the Barcaldine Sand Goannas against Blackall, Longreach and Winton.
Our first stop is Blackall. On our drive there we passed cactus, emus and heaps of road kill. The crows have a good life out here, they just need to hang around the bitumen and they will get an easy feed. We also saw a muster in action there must have been about 300 cattle being rounded up by drovers on horses. Pretty cool.
We set up camp out the Barcoo Hotel van park. The pub has a large area of ground behind it and they have set this up as van sites with power and water. You use the showers and toilets of the pub and to get to these you have to walk through the pub’s beer garden. The boys decided not to wear their pyjamas from the shower on Sunday night when the “all you can eat Chinese buffet” was on and the beer garden was full of locals.
We picked what we thought was the best site and then headed to the main street to check out the town. To give you an idea of its size, Blackall is a three pub town. It rained on us as we walked the town as a thunderstorm came through, which was just as well as it got up to 41 degrees and the storm cooled it down. Later, when we were back at camp, it quickly became clear that we had not picked the best site. The afternoon sun was pouring in on us, where, if we had picked a site about three along, some good size trees would have protected us from the scorching heat of the western sun. So we decided to do a quick move. We unhooked our power and water but left the awning in place and then manoeuvred the van through the park and onto the new site.
Not a lot to see in town as, as per small country towns, nearly everything except the pubs close at midday on Saturday and don’t reopen until Monday. One of Blackall’s main claims to fame is that it is the home town of Jackie Howe, a famous shearer who sheared a record amount of sheep (over 300) in one day using hand (manual) shears. Jackie Howe is now immortalised in the Jackie Howe black singlets you can buy. There was a Jackie Howe store in town but, it was closed. Went back to the park but decided to spend the remainder of the afternoon in the air conditioned pub, having a few drinks and the boys watching ABC3 TV.
Next morning we were up early, again, due to the heat. After breakfast we decided to go to the local park for a while and play some cricket and kick the footy with the boys. We had to be out doing this early as, by around 8.00am, it was too hot. The big attraction in Blackall is the Wool Scour. This is a steam powered wool washing plant that was set up in around 1908 and operated until 1978. The reason it existed was that when wool was sheared it was full of dirt and grime and this dirty wool attracted a poor price. The wool scour cleaned up the wool. It was a huge plant with steam powered washers and dryers. There were once 52 of these plants scattered all over Australia. Now Blackall has the only working one left. It has been partly restored and is a very impressive engineering feat.
Our guide for the tour was Beaver, an 80 year old ex-drover. Beaver must have given his speech a thousand times as, when he started, there was no stopping him. He quickly got into stride with his spiel and on he went, telling us about one thing, turning and then moving onto the next. No time for questions or photos. And he was not the easiest to understand. But, having said that, he was a bit of a character and entertained the boys half way around as he stopped and went through a rope trick routine for them.
Later in the day we tried to cool off in the local pool. This could be achieved if you stayed up the shallow end under the shade cloth. If you ventured out of the shade, it quickly got hot and uncomfortable. Back at the park the boys made some friends with the neighbouring kids and played some footy and cricket until stumps.
