Charleville - Part 4

Yes, there is still more to share from Charleville.

The final place we were to visit at Charleville was the Secret World War II Air Base.  

During  WWII, there were 3,500 American servicemen based at Charleville and the whole town kept it a secret.  Charleville was selected, as they already had an airfield, used by Qantas, was nice and flat and had lots of cover from the surrounding mulga scrub.  It was also far enough away that Japanese planes could not reach that far and have sufficient fuel to return to Japan.

This gives you an indication of how things were hidden by the naturally occuring mulgas.

There has been a museum established to share information about those times and you can also do a tag along tour of the old base to learn more about it.  There isn’t a great deal of original infrastructure, as at the end of the war, the buildings were either demolished or sold to locals to be transported elsewhere.  We opted to do the tour as well as visit the museum.  Let’s start with the tour.

As I said, there isn’t a great deal to see.  There was just the concrete floor of the shower block.

These depressions were dug and lined with bitumen to be baths.  They were used by the servicemen to maintain the required cleanliness.

There was an onsite dance hall, which after the war was removed to Charleville and became the RSL Club.  Sadly, it has since burnt down.

Remember Harry Corones, of the Hotel Corones.  Well, he held dances at his hall every night except Sunday, for the US servicemen.  Several local girls married men from the US and moved over there after the war, including his daughter.

One building that does remain is the Norden Bomb Vault.  The building was used to house the Norden Bomb Sight, one of the most closely guarded secrets of the US military in WWII.  The sight was loaded onto planes just prior to them leaving for a mission.  It was always under armed guard and housed in this vault when not in use.  

It was a gadget made up of mirrors, motors, gears and  levers and was used to determine exactly when to release a bomb.  It was claimed to be accurate to hit a 100 foot circle from an altitude of 21,000 feet, but in actual use, less than that.

However, it turns out that the blueprints of the Norden Bomb Sight, had been smuggled by a spy to the Germans back in 1938.  Zoom in to read about it.

Next, we went to the museum.  It turns out it only opened in 2023.

The first section of the museum is all about the “Queen Mary”, which was converted to a troop ship for WWII.  Most of the US servicemen arrived on her.  

I was particularly interested in this, not for that reason, but because my Dad sailed on her to Singapore for his WWII service over there.

The museum was interesting in giving details of what was entailed to maintain and feed so many men.  There was also details on how it affected the locals and some of the significant people that were involved.  Really informative.

Back at the caravan park that evening, we were treated to a spectacular sunset.

The fire pit area was visited by the local possum.  The little kids were delighted with it.

And that concluded our time in Charleville.  It was really worth visiting the area and staying for a few days.

Charleville - Part 3

Who’d have thought there was so much to see in Charleville.

On our next day we went on yet another tour.  This time it was to a date farm.  Now that is something different, so not to be missed.  We had spoken to a lady at the caravan park who highly recommended it after her visit the day before.

The farm is “Outback Date Farms” and was established in 2014.  Mark, the owner had grown some date palms near Brisbane and wanted to take it further.  He settled on Charleville, due to the climate, and in a very enterprising manner, approached the local council.  The property he had selected was just downstream from the sewerage treatment works and the runoff after treatment was literally just running down the paddock.  Mark requested to use the water, and the council agreed, on the condition that once established, he conduct tours.

He has established a series of ponds and dams.

There are 500 trees on the farm.  He had planned to plant more, but has determined that it would be too much work to manage.

Date palms are the most salt tolerant of all fruits trees, so suit the climate well.  They also produce lots of offshoot plants, so are easy to propagate.  You can see one of the offshoots on this palm.

There are several varieties.  The only variety that most of us had heard of was Medjool.  Most of the ones we see in Australia are grown in California.  Mark grows a lot of other varieties, which are familiar to people from the Middle East and they are delighted to be able to buy them fresh in Australia.  

We did a taste test and there really is quite a difference between varieties.  As well as fresh dates, we tasted date juice and date liqueur, both delicious.  As they are only a small operation, they only sell fresh dates and the value added items, not dried dates.  Sadly, in the heavy rains earlier in the year, his cool room leaked and much of the most recent harvest were spoiled.

The tour concluded with morning tea of a delicious date loaf and we were all given the recipe.  

You could purchase some of the products and we bought some sticky date pudding for tea that night  Yum.

We really enjoyed the tour and Mark was a very engaging and informative guide.  It was not something we had expected to see, so a nice bonus.

It’s Daphne Time

Our lovely daphne bush near our back door is in full bloom at the moment and the fragrance when you step outside is divine.

Yesterday, I picked just three blooms to pop in a little vase and initially I didn’t really smell it.  However, when I came inside after being out today the room was definitely daphne scented.  Who would think that just three little flowers could be so strong.  Mick said that it stinks, but he was joking.  He loves the daphne as well.  We have planted a smaller cultivar near our front door recently, so we hope it grows half was well as our first one.

Being daphne time means that it is also hellebore time.  

I do love these gentle colours that appear in late winter.

All our different violets are blooming away, along with the polyanthus.

We have several jonquils, but the daffodils are a little way off.  

We divided some very crowded old fashioned frilly daffodil bulbs in summer. Mick has been popping them in here, there and everywhere, yep even throughout the vege gardens.  I don’t think they are going to flower this year.  Hopefully they will be back to their usual selves next year.

The garden at the side of our shed was getting very overgrown, with some of the things we planted being lost as a result, so it was time to get in and tidy it up, ready for spring.

That looks a lot better.  The irrigation has been moved to the back and Mick will add some more micro jets at the front, once he gets to the shop.  I’m sure some of the things we dug out will come up again to fill the blank areas.  We have taken a hydrangea out of a pot and planted it here, where it should thrive.  The day after we did this a good friend gifted me a rose in memory of Mum, called “Mother’s Love”.  It has now been planted in this garden as well.

While Mick was digging things out, I was planting seedlings and runners into little pots for the church fete in the middle of October.  That should give them plenty of time to either settle in or die.  I hope they settle in.  I potted up 40 pots.  We have some other things in various garden beds that also need thinning, so there will be some more pots prepared soon.

It is currently raining gently, which is always good for things to get growing, coming into one of the nicest seasons of the year.

How Disappointing

You may remember that last winter I started to knit a jumper.  This is the pattern.  It had many new techniques for me to try, being knitted from the top down, with a lace yoke.

Well, I didn’t get all that far with it before other shiny things took my attention.   It has been waiting patiently for me to get back to it.  This year has been a little crazy, and I must say that I haven’t been the right frame of mind just lately, despite having plenty of time to work on it.

Finally, yesterday, I decided to pull it out and recommence working on the lace yoke.  There weren’t too many rows to go before things would be much simpler.

Well, I knitted to the first stitch marker, and notice that the next stitch was just over the needle, not a stitch.  That didn’t make sense.  I thought I must have dropped a stitch, which would be easy to recitify.

However, upon closer inspection, it turns out there is a break in the wool a few rows back.  What!  Has a moth been in there? How disappointing.  I really don’t want to try to unpick back to there, so I am going to abandon the project at this point.  I know that may sound defeatist, but it is the best thing at the present time.

I may start this jumper again, or I may use a different pattern, using a technique I’m more familiar with, seeing it is a long time since I have knitted a jumper.

In the meantime, there is another rather simple top I would like to knit for summer.  I just have to wait until I can start pulling down boxes to find the linen blend yarn that is in stash.

Charleville - Part 2

Our next day in Charleville was rather leisurely.  

The only touristy thing we did was go to the railway station, which is the location of the information centre and most importantly the home of the Bilby Centre.

You can still travel to Charleville by train, with two services each week. The railway reached Charleville in 1888, with the current station being built in the late 1950s.  It has beautiful terrazzo floors, having different colours in different sections.

Now, the reason we were there was the bilbies.

You initially enter a theatrette, where we learnt a bit about bilbies and more importantly how their numbers have declined to near extinction.  Originally, they covered most of Australia, but not where we live, as it is too cold.  Feral animals, namely foxes, cats and rabbits are responsible for most of the decline.  There are only two areas left in the country with a wild population.  One is in western Queensland and the other in the Pilbara in Western Australia.  Both only have tiny populations.

Enter the Bilby Brothers.

Peter McRae, a zoologist, was always passionate about bilbies.

Frank Manthey was a roo shooter, turned National Parks ranger who had recently lost his wife.  Peter approached him to join him in trying to save the bilbies.

Together they formed the Save the Bilby Fund.  Their aim was to establish a breeding program and release some bilbies into a controlled, pest free environment.

They did so much fund raising, including encouraging Darrell Lea to make Easter Bilbies instead of Easter bunnies, with proceeds going to the fund.  A special fence would be needed, so people could buy a fence post.

Eventually, they were able to fence off an area of 100 ha in the Currawinya National Park.  The fence has different sized netting, which is buried into the ground and has a floppy top to prevent animals climbing over.  It then has several strands of electric fencing.  

In 2005, six pairs were released into the park.  Sadly, some time later a flood went through, damaging the fence and all bilbies were lost.

The fence was rebuilt, this time all in stainless steel and a further group of bilbies were released, which are doing well.  They breed, not like rabbits, but like bilbies. However, they do breed quickly.  

The next plan is to do a controlled release of some bilbies into the area outside the current enclosure, still with a very concerted effort to keep feral animals away.  I do hope it succeeds.

They played a video of a 60 Minutes segment from when they originally released the first batch of bilbies.  That was back in 2005, and the presenter mentioned that they estimated, at that time, that there were about 20 million feral cats in Australia.  How many more would there be now?  We saw many on the side of the road, in broad daylight, as we travelled along on this trip, something we had never seen before.  We mentioned it to the lady there and she said that many travellers had made a similar comment.  Quite worrying.

Back to our tour…

The next part of the tour was to enter the night room.  They have a few bilbies in this area, where the room is lit during our night and dark during the day, so that we can see these nocturnal creatures.  

They really are rather cute.

We do hope that this wonderful little creature can be saved.  I doubt very much if they will ever be able to have a wide release back into the wild, but if they can have some living in a natural environment and preserve those small wild pockets that will be better than nothing.

Now for the rest of our day……

We just had a wander around town looking at the lovely old buildings.  Being Sunday, there was very little open.  Come for a walk with us.

You can see the town thrived in the 1920s, by the architecture.

After our walk, Mick was able to go and have a roll at the local bowling club, who made him feel very welcome.

The day was finished off by joining other travellers at the fire pit in the caravan park.  A nice, social way to end an enjoyable day.  Oh, and you really need to be with the right person, as there is always someone who knows someone you know.  We had a nice chat with a lady that used to ride motorcycles with many of the old motorcyclists from Bathurst.  Small world.

We then looked forward to seeing some more on the following day.