Thursday 7th July Emerald

  Before departing Barcaldine, we decided to visit the Australian Workers Heritage Centre as we’d heard that it was quite an interesting museum particularly with a lot of information on the early beginnings of the Labour (Labor) Party and unionism.  It was set over several large buildings that were once the Barcaldine High School. A new R-12 school had been built elsewhere. Many buildings had been brought into the grounds including an old Police station, one teacher school house, Shearers’ Hall, Post Office, an old railway station etc. One of the largest display buildings was “The Tent”. Originally the tent was part of Australia’s Bicentennial Celebrations, touring around Australia. It was used as a theatre during the celebrations and had been donated to Barcaldine by Bob Hawke. Many of the displays related to the shearers’ strike and then other strikes leading to outcomes like the formation of unions and the Labor Party. After spending a couple of hours here, we were on the road again. We had an uneventful drive to our next stop, Emerald. Emerald is a large town, large enough to have quite a few sets of traffic lights, something we have not experienced for a while. After setting up we went for a short drive out to see a huge lake, Lake Maraboon and Fairbairn Dam, the water supply for Emerald and surrounding area.