Sunshine again in Charleville

The brief misty rain that was here yesterday has now gone, and there is blue sky again.    A successful washing day with nothing acquiring extra bits of fluff.

We visited an historic house on the main street, which started life as a bank in the 1890s, with the walk in safe still in the front room.    After that it became a large residence for different families.

The house and sheds were packed with old things.   I think every family in the district must have donated items for this museum.   It was difficult to look at everything closely.   Just too much stuff.

 

A display behind glass.

An old curved fridge.   Not ever seen one of these before.

One of the bedrooms.

An old kitchen,

and an even older kitchen out in the side back room.   It had a pantry room next to it.

This is an old rail ambulance, which was built for Charleville.    Due to the difficulty in getting people from outlying areas to Charleville it was apparent that the best way was to use the railway.    The unsealed roads were often impassable because of rain.  The rail ambulance contained the patient/s, an ambulance attendant and a driver.    They stopped using them in the 1950s.

The rabbit poison machine which planted bits of poison into the ground in a way that stock could not eat them.    

The old car.

Afterwards we found a lovely cafe, in the old hotel which is now closed, that had pea and ham soup with sour dough bread as its special for the day.    We could not resist such delicious fare.   It was superb, although Walter looks like he is not enjoying the soup.   I think I caught him by surprise.   There is nothing worse than people taking a photograph without first warning the person.

It was definitely the  best pea and ham soup, even better than the Dutch pea soup.

The Warrego river, and the narrow bridge, with the very high flood bank on the town side.

The Warrego River is a 1380 km river in the Darling-Murray Basin.   It flows through Charleville and Cunnemulla before it joins the Darling in New South Wales.

There are many different places to visit in Charleville, as there are in most towns up this way.   One of them is the Royal Flying Doctor Visitor Centre.   We visited one of the centres in Alice Springs so decided not to go to this one.   

However, Walter had his own Royal Flying Doctor experience a couple of weeks ago, when he flew in an air ambulance from Cobar to Dubbo.    This was due to his bowel problem when in Cobar, and the Dubbo hospital wanted to check him out there so the quickest way was via the Royal Flying Doctor Service.    

For people that do not live in Australia the Royal Flying Doctor Service is a major not-for-profit aeromedical and primary health care organisation in Australia.  It covers 7.69 million square kilometres.  They provide 24 hour medical services to people in rural, regional and remote areas.   And it is free for patients.

Walter standing beside the plane that flew him from Cobar to Dubbo.  It contained stretchers and seats.  

An ambulance attendant was with him on the plane. 

This is certainly an improvement to the railway ambulance shown in one of the photos above.

Tomorrow we start to head south again.   The next town will be Cunnamulla.