Around Charleville

Saturday, 5 October 2024

This morning, we were out at the Secret WWII Base just before 9.00am to pick up the Tag-along tour of the site. Despite it being the end of the season, the number of vehicles and people booked onto this morning’s tour was … impressive. I think Abbie thought we were all a bit mad to be in Charleville at this time of the year as the weather is starting to heat up.

In 1941 the US Air Force took over Charleville’s airport for a secret base and 3,500 US service men arrived in town. We toured around the ruins of the Class A quarters which is where the most important people housed at the base were quartered. We saw the remains of the Bitumen Baths were all personnel had to take a full immersion bath in bore water laced with DDT to keep them free of nits and ticks. Ugh!

Our next stop was the ruins of Mess Hall before we moved on to the remnants of the base’s Dance Hall where many a local gal danced the night away with a US Airman. We disturbed a sunbathing goanna at this stop. At least something was enjoying the heat! Our next stop was at the shower bock and toilets. A mulga snake has made its home in the old drains so we viewed these from a healthy distance. A line of cones denoted the exclusion zone and Abbie advised us all to stay behind the cones. Despite the warnings she said she regularly has to remind people to come back from the actual footings because they might encounter the snake! You don’t have to tell me twice to stay away from a snake!

We drove next to the airfield which resumed operation as the town’s airstrip after the Americans left the base in 1946. The hangar left behind by the US Air Force houses the planes that are operated by the RFDS with their headquarters situated just outside the gates. Between the war and now the site has also been used by the French to conduct meteorological activities.

Our last stop on the tour was at the Norden Bomb Vault. This was the most secret part of the site. The work being done on the Norden Bomb Sight was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the US military during WWII. The bomb sight, invented by Carl Norden was a mechanical analog computer made up of gyros, motors, gears, mirrors, levers and a telescope. It was used to determine the exact moment high altitude bombs had to be dropped to hit the target accurately. Bombardiers trained in its operation had to swear under oath that they would protects its secrecy with their lives if necessary.

After the tour we returned to the WWII Secret Base Museum. The museum has only been open since 2021 and tells the story of the US Airmen arriving on the refitted Queen Mary, Top Secret information (declassified after the Vietnam War), classified missions and wartime romances. Charleville is really trying to develop itself as a destination rather than just a place to stop on the way north or south. In this zone just south of the town, it now boasts the WWII Secret Base and the Cosmos Centre (more on that later) and the brand-new Museum of the Outback currently under construction and due to open next year.

We drove back into town and returned to the Visitor Information Centre AGAIN, this time to book onto the 2.00pm tour of the Corone’s Hotel. With virtually everything closed at noon on a Saturday in a small outback town we had to track down some lunch at the Paris Café. Not much on offer but we each managed to find a sandwich to our liking in the fridge.

Back at our motel we retreated to the air-conditioned comfort of our rooms for a couple of hours. Our hottest day so far with the temperature climbing above 30°C today. Just before 2.00pm we drove around to the Corone’s Hotel. It’s only 450 metres between the Waltzing Matilda Motor Inn and the hotel but it was deemed too hot to walk!!

We met our guide, Rachel, in the foyer and learnt all about Greek immigrant Haralambos (Harry) Corones and the impact that he had on Charleville after deciding to make it his home as we made our way around the classic old hotel. After two years of compulsory military service in Greece between 1904 and 1906, Harry emigrated to Australia together with his 12-year-old nephew. After a couple of years in Sydney and Brisbane, Harry moved to Charleville to buy a run-down café which he turned into a roaring success.

His business acumen in the hospitality trade was noted and in 1912 he was encouraged to take over the lease of the Hotel Charleville. In 1915 Harry and three partners opened Charleville’s first cinema and in 1924 he commenced his dream project, his own hotel. The Corone’s Hotel opened on the corner of Wills and Galatea Streets in 1929. Harry was also very involved in the community serving on the Hospital Board, the Ambulance and Fire Brigade Board and being one of the original shareholders of QANTAS.

After a complimentary drink at the hotel’s bar at the conclusion of our tour – reputedly the longest bar in Queensland and possibly the Southern hemisphere – we retreated to our rooms again to rest and rehydrate and make a start on our blog post for today.

Tonight, we returned to the Cattle Camp Hotel for dinner. While we were at the bar at Corone’s Hotel this afternoon we were watching a screen showing a pizza being made. Mmmn, we thought while watching it, pizza could be the go for dinner tonight? We ordered four pizzas and then settled in to wait and wait … and wait for our pizzas. Cathy could see lots of pizzas going into the pizza oven and coming out to be put in take-away boxes but, where were the eat-in pizzas?? Eventually after waiting for nearly an hour, our pizzas were delivered to our table.

At 9.00pm it was time for the last activity we had booked for Charleville, a night session at the Cosmos Centre on, wait for it, Milky Way! The clouds had behaved and stayed away for our evening of star gazing. We looked at a number of different things in our galaxy and in one of the adjacent galaxies. We started with Alpha Centauri which we could clearly see as a binary system through the telescope. After viewing several other stars and clusters we concluded with Saturn which was amazing. Even though the rings are currently in a side-on viewing plane it was amazing to see the ringed planet and its largest moon, Titan, very clearly.