We’ve spent the last 2 days here in Charleville visiting various tourist spots. Charleville is known for the Cosmos centre and its night star gazing experiences from their observatory. We spent some time at the centre, viewing all things connected with space, from the star gazing to interactive displays on the universe and space in general.

Also Charleville had a huge US Air Base here during WW2, with 3,500 US airman here. The base was a major maintenance and training base for the USAAF B17 bomber squadrons, as well as other USAAF and RAAF units. It was a “secret base” as it was the main training facility for the bomber crews using the Norden Bomb Site, which was very secretive and its use was under high security. Bombardiers had to sign a none disclosure that they would never talk about the bomb site if they were captured.

Charleville has one of the 8 regional Royal Flying Doctor Bases at the airport and we happened to be at the visitor centre when a RFDS aircraft flew in with a patient and then during the star gazing one aircraft took off. Pretty amazing to think that at anytime across Australia the RFDS is in operation. It’s for this reason the regional towns love the RFDS and spend so much time raising money for it across regional Australia. I’m sure its not appreciated in the major cities as it should be, obviously because its out of site, so out of mind. John Flynn’s determination to create the service nearly 100 years ago has provided Australia with a service we can all feel very proud of.

We visited a number of other places in town like the RSL but a favourite was the Yellow Footed Rock Wallabies. The photo below shows these unique creatures and what is so pleasing is they are now off the endangered list.

We leave Charleville tomorrow heading eastwards back to the coast. First stop is Roma, about 270 k’s from Charleville and over 400 k’s from Brisbane.