A trail of dinosaurs and Dreaming in Barcaldine, QLD
Prehistoric beasts, Indigneous culture and colonial history combine at a new Queensland attraction.
Originally, there were the dinosaurs. Then came Australia’s first people and, much later, pioneering settlers from faraway lands. This triumvirate of history comes together at Desert Dreaming Centre, which opened in September last year at Barcaldine in central west Queensland.
Artist Cheryl Thompson and palaeontologist Paul Stumkat have joined forces to create an attraction that tells stories of these three facets of the region’s history through art, dance, music and play. They believe the blend of Aboriginal culture and palaeontology devised as the Dinosaur Dreaming Trail will not only teach visitors more about the past and present realities of life in the Outback but will increase stays and seasonality in Barcaldine and increase the “geographical footprint” of travellers as they journey through the state.
“It’s about the evolution of the Outback,” Thompson says as she guides me around the centre. On the street front, there’s a sculpture of an Indigenous woman and a cart drawn by two goats. “This is Auntie Cissy,” I’m told. “I feel really passionately that we need more art and sculpture to represent our mob here. Look at her, that’s how we look, those round cheeks!” The sculpture, based on an old photograph, is by Barcaldine artist Milynda Rogers, otherwise known as “the scrap metal sheila”, who also created the sculpture of a shearer that stands in Barcaldine’s main street, next to the town’s most famous attraction, the Tree of Knowledge memorial. The meeting place for striking shearers in 1891 and birthplace of the Australian Labor Party, the 10m-tall ghost gum was poisoned in 2006 and a memorial now stands in its place.
The annual May Day celebrations feature goat cart races; the rudimentary vehicles also were used for carrying water in the early days of settlement, and the sculpture gives an appropriately multifaceted introduction to a tour of Desert Dreaming Centre. In its cafe, the walls are hung with Thompson’s paintings, the beginnings of a series based on desert women’s work covering seven paintings representing seven aunties who influenced her growing up. That influence helped instil in Thompson a passion for education. A teacher for 20 years, she has established an independent school for children from remote communities who come to stay in her Alice River Aboriginal Student Hostel and follow a curriculum that combines school work with learning about culture, art and tourism. A workroom is strewn with artists’ materials, a space where the teenagers work on their projects, which are sold at the Desert Dreaming Centre’s shop. “Tourists love to sit and talk to them,” Thompson says. “Each student is developing their own style, depending on which artists they work with, and are influenced by what they see, and where they come from.”
A corroboree ring is the venue for lunchtime and evening dance performances and a light show under a purpose-built canvas shelter. New dances are being developed that tell stories. “They will all be Queensland dances,” says Thompson, “of desert, saltwater, rainforest … We’re looking at developing an aeroplane dance to fit in with the Qantas story in Longreach, and one about the exclusion fences, built to keep out kangaroos and emus.”
Another element of the centre is devoted to Queensland dinosaurs, including teaching children through play (who can resist digging for dinosaur bones in a sandpit?), developed by Stumkat, a co-creator of another Queensland palaeontology attraction, Kronosaurus Korner in nearby Richmond. He’s also the tour director for Trackers Tours, which operates out of Desert Dreaming Centre and runs guided excursions around Barcy, as Barcaldine is known, including a visit to Auntie Cissy’s country at Lake Dolly and its fringe camp.
In the know
Desert Dreaming Centre reopens on February 8. Barcaldine is 100km east of Longreach; Qantas offers return services from Brisbane.
Lee Mylne was a guest of Tourism & Events Queensland.
