This evening we’re on the lands of the Iningai people in Barcaldine. We pay our respects to the elders of the Iningai past, present and emerging.
It was only a relatively short drive deeper into Central Queensland from Winton today, to an area generally known as the capital of Central Queensland. It was nice to just have a relaxed pack up in Winton, and we were on the road by about 9am (after a quick stop at a wonderful little cafe/bookshop in Winton – primarily for a coffee for me, but it turned into a second hand book buying opportunity for the kids!). A bit under two hours down the road, we stopped in at Longreach for morning tea. We had a brief wander through the Qantas Park just on the side of the Landsborough Hwy. We’re coming back to Longreach tomorrow to do more here. (When I was planning, I decided it made more sense to stay overnight in Barcaldine, to make the drive to Rockhampton shorter – especially considering the distance between Longreach and Barcaldine is only an hour.)
We arrived in Barcaldine at about 1pm, ready for some lunch. We pulled up right near the Tree of Knowledge and found a picnic table to make our sandwiches at. While the kids enjoyed climbing a tree beside our picnic table, Debbie and I wandered over to the Tree of Knowledge and all the surrounding information. It was really special to spend some time reading everything that was there; and to also stand beneath the memorial of the Tree, imagining all that has happened here and what that has led to in Australia today. It’s such an underrated and often overlooked part of Australia’s history (although, the Manifesto of the Queensland Labour Party that was read under the Tree in 1892 is part of the UNESCO Memory of the World collection, I learnt today).
We also headed down to the Australian Workers Heritage Centre for a visit. There was a chance this was going to be really uninteresting for the kids and involve lots of reading, but we still thought it was a great chance for them to at least briefly learn about some of the history of Australian workers across a huge variety of sectors, which are all part of different displays in the Centre. It was actually much bigger than I thought it was – all up there were 14 different displays, all mostly in different buildings. Each display related to a different industry or sector of workers and how it has evolved or been shaped through history – postal workers, Main Roads, railway workers, women, the electoral commission… there were so many. In the middle of the centre was the Young-Un – the only direct descendent of the Tree of Knowledge. It was created in 2005 by the Department of Primary Industries from DNA from the Tree of Knowledge, and planted at the AWHC. The timing turned out to be incredible, with the Tree of Knowledge poisoned the very next year. We did move through everything at the Workers Heritage Centre fairly quickly, but it was still a great visit and hopefully the kids took a few things away from it as well. And there was actually enough different interactive or interesting displays to keep the kids fairly engaged during the afternoon as well.
Back into the land of motels for the next few nights – both here and then at Rockhampton over the weekend. And soon we’ll venture down to one of the pubs in town that has just reopened under new ownership apparently – the Shakespeare Hotel.
