Natural sciences because it takes in astronomy through the cosmos centre at charleville, birdwatching at the many wetlands throughout the area, dinosaurs at Eromanga where Titanosaurus (Cooper) was found and they are working on others as well. Geology through the oil, gas and opal fields. History and heritage, we were only 180klms away from the Burke and Wills "dig tree". One thing not mentioned is the Magic.. The magic of the red soils out here. The colour is just as rich as that of the deep centre of Australia and the magic appears to be that hold that the coloured sands get over you. If you have been to this type of country, you will know what I mean.
The people out here are friendly as well. Something that is synonymous with the remote style of community here. We met Eddie again, the Opal Hunter from Quilpie. We first met Eddie at Winton where he was fitting out an old butchers shop as a new opal business for him. Just by chatting with him, he suggested we drop in at Quilpie and have a look around and we did. Eddie explained the areas that opal is found and strangely follows the shoreline pattern of the ancient Eromanga sea that stretched from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the great Australian bight.On the map you can see how these areas are linked. At quilpie, the altar in St.Finbarrs catholic church is opal, as is the pulpit and the font. All beautiful stone. Today is the first continuous rain that we have seen since leaving the sunshine coast in June and the sound of rolling thunder, the odd strike of lightning and this area are all magic as well.
Yesterday we saw a couple of "new" parrots and upon consulting the book were able to name them as ring necked parrots, the same sort we had seen in the Flinders ranges two years ago.
