It was a car full of excited tourists that set off from the caravan park at 9.15am for our 9.30 tour at The Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame. We were all looking forward to that one!

Upon arrival we checked in and were told our program for the morning. First up we would visit the Cinema to watch a 20 minute movie on the history and life of stockmen in Australia. As we walked into the cinema we were handed a cattle ear tag for later use. We all enjoyed the movie very much. The movie is shown on a very large arc screen and is very well produced.

As we left the cinema we were handed our audio guides for our visit into the museum. As you enter the museum a staff member activates your audio guides and then you are free to wander the museum and listen to whichever story takes your interest. There are so many fascinating stories from stockmen, Royal Flying Doctor pilots, famous Aboriginal women stockmen, property owners such as Bessie Durack whose property now lies under Lake Argyle and many more. It was interesting to learn about the life of the drovers, the tinkers and the Afghan cameleers.

I’m in awe of pioneer women and how they managed to create homes in such unforgiving circumstances. They raised and educated their children and often helped the men with the stock work. They were gutsy women. Sometimes the isolation must have been awful.

We learnt about the visiting boxing tents, graduation balls, rodeos and how important the local races were in the social calendars.

We heard stories, songs and poems from some of Australia’s best bush poets and songwriters.

We had 1 1/2 hours to explore the museum. Ben and Maddie did the Scavenger hunt for kids and they thoroughly enjoyed searching the museum for the items by following the clues. Once you find the object you had to hold your audio guide above it and it would register that you had found the object. Once all objects had been found you could take your guide back and they were issued with a card saying they’d completed the quest. What fun!

The next part of our tour at The Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame was the Live Stockman’s Show. We had to meet outdoors near a billabong armed with ear tags that we’d been given at the start. Once everyone was gathered we were directed into a large outdoor covered arena with tiered seating on one side, handing in the ear tags as our entry ticket.

The show demonstrated the skills of stockmen and women including horse skills, amazing whip cracking, working dogs and sheep and there was even a part dedicated to the Australian Light Horsemen and their horses that fought in WWI. It was so sad that we sent 136,000 horses to the war and only 1 was returned.

The hour long show was a mix of stockman’s skills, poetry, songs with some dad jokes thrown in. We all enjoyed it very much.

We went back to camp where Katie had to hook up her van so she could take it to the auto-electrician to see if he could find out why the electric brakes were not working. The boys stayed at camp while Rich and I were dropped off in the Main Street so we could have a bit of a wander.

About an hour later Katie called to say it was all fixed. Yay! So we waited for her to come and collect us.

Katie and the kids set off for the Sound and Light Show at the Qantas Founders Museum and Rich and I walked to The Woolshed, a restaurant within the Longreach Tourist Park. We enjoyed steak and pork ribs sitting out on the verandah. It was a very pleasant dinner.