Day 102, Thursday, 9 July 2009

Cloncurry

Cloncurry is known for a number of things.

The recording of the hottest temperature ever recorded in Australia  - 53.1 C in 1889 (I am not sure  how this fits into the global warming arguement). This is seriously hot, in the mid 90s I was in Death Valley in the US on a similarly hot day and the bus’ air-conditioning had to be turned off to allow the bus to climb a hill into the valley and then the motel’s air conditioning and fridges broke down. I cannot imagine living in such conditions without modern insulation and cooling. 

QANTAS started operating out of Cloncurry.

The trial of what eventually became the Royal Flying Doctor Service was centred and grew out of Cloncurry.

There are a couple of museums, the Mary Kathleen Memorial Museum and Mineral Collection and John Flynn Place. This afternoon we visited John Flynn Place, which commemorates the efforts of John Flynn of the Presbyterian Church’s Inland Mission and his founding of the Flying Doctor Service in 1928. 

The museum was an 1988 Australian Bicentennial Project and has three levels. The ground floor is devoted to John Flynn and how he realised the potential of combining the then emerging technologies of radio and aviation with the practice of medicine to service the outback. The lower floor is dedicated to the development of the pedal powered radio by Alfred Traeger, which was critical to the establishment of the flying doctor service and subsequently utilised to establish the School of the Air. Two of Australia’s unique icons of outback living. The second level is the Fred McKay Art Gallery named after John Flynn’s successor.

We found the museum far more interesting than the Mary Kathleen Memorial Museum and Mineral Collection that we visited yesterday which by comparison is a very old and uninspiring style of museum, unless you are into rocks. We were able to keep ourselves occupied for over an hour and half at John Flynn Place and found the first two floors very informative. We were both disappointed with the Fred McKay Art Gallery. Although there are some nice paintings we were both distracted by the fact that many hung crookedly and all the pictures are crammed tightly together without any obvious curatorial approach.

Zoom into the map and use the 'Satellite' layer to see our new location.

Not the most inviting sign. Gilbert Park Tourist Village, Cloncurry.

An unintended self portrait whilst sneaking a photo of Denise 'working'.

John Flynn Place and the RFDS story.

Fred McKay Art Gallery. We were both distracted by the fact that many pictures hung crookedly.

Sculptured fossil outside the Department of Natural Resources and Water, Cloncurry. Throughout our ride we have seen many elements of this sculpture embedded in the road. We wonder if this is where the inspiration for this work came from.

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