Queensland Air Museum and Sunshine Castle

 

1 July 2022 – 330 480

Queensland Air Museum has a huge variety of aircraft, many of which are undercover, so a great option for a drizzly day. Loads of information and plaques with the service history of each aircraft.

https://qam.com.au/

After lunch, we visited Sunshine Castle at Bli Bli – best described as unusual and a little bit disturbing. I didn't take any photographs of the rather disturbing doll and fairy tale displays - nightmare material. Won’t be revisiting that one anytime soon.

https://sunshinecastle.com/

QANTAS Founders Museum, Longreach

Tuesday 9 July 2019 – 267 681

QANTAS Founders Museum was today’s destination. https://qfom.com.au/ It was again a very full day with an enormous amount of information available.  We started in the museum part.  Hayden loved the flight simulator and even managed to master take off and landing.  We did a jet tour, which included an external look at a DC-3, internal and external detailed tour of a Boeing 747, and of a Boeing 707 that had been kitted out like a luxury yacht.

The original 1920’s QANTAS hangar is still in place at the museum (which is not surprisingly at the Longreach Airport).  After exploring this we returned to the museum to explore some more.  Five new things I learnt today

•         There was a system of lights (rotating beacon style) on the top of a windmill style frame between Cloncurry and Longreach to enable night flying
•         QANTAS was the first airline outside the United States to order a Boeing jet aircraft
•         The first paying passenger was 84 years old and had undertaken the same trip by bullock wagon when younger
•         QANTAS built their own planes under license from De Haviland for a period
•         The Boeing 707 on display had been sitting idle in a field in England and was completely restored before being flown to Australia.  It took approximately 15 000 volunteer man hours to achieve