Oct. 5 - Road Trip Day 2

Day 2 (Sat., Oct. 5) - This was an interesting adventure!  It started by a near death experience as we were almost sideswiped by a passing truck (no photo for this one).  We were well away from anything resembling sizable towns, just driving through dry country with small towns consisting of about twenty houses and four stores.  

This is a big town

We stopped in Cherburg, which was an aborginal settlement where the aboriginal people were forced to live until the 1980s.  They couldn't leave the settlement without passes from the governors, could not have their own bank accounts, and were forced to work for food rations.  The children were taken from the parents and put into dormitories so that the parents could go back to work.  After the aboriginals finally gained some recognition, they managed to save some of the old buildings and made a museum.  The museum guides were women who had lived in the settlement as children, and it was really moving to hear them tell their stories.  What a place!

Cherburg Museum

We then went on to Kilkivan, where the first gold was found in Australia.  Annie had read about a mine where we could pan for gold.  We asked directions in town, and the shopkeeper had never heard of the mine.  Ominous!  We finally found it, and checked things out.  their main business these days is stone and gravel for garden supplies, but they did have a gravel heap that you could use to pan for gold.  We watched a couple of dads with their kids, and sure enough, there were tiny flakes of gold in the gravel. The dads and their kids did not get rich.

Panning for gold

The Putnam Gold Mine in all its glory

Our last stop of the day was Kingaroy which turns out is the peanut capital of Australia.  One of the advertised things to do in town was visit the Peanut Van which we did.  The peanuts were great.  We had an interesting dinner at a local hotspot - the RSL.  That is the Returned Service League for the armed services.  They served dinner and had a lot of gambling going on.  In the middle of the evening, we all stood for a moment of silence for the fallen servicemen, and they played something similar to taps.  There was a lot of war memorabilia on display and it was really quite interesting.