Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame & Outback Heritage Centre — Attraction in Longreach

We just visited the galleries as we have done the show before. It was so good years ago. Today it was just plain frustrating.

Everyone walking around like zombies listening to headphones. No interaction at all. Could not share the experience with my husband as we were always on different talks. Nothing to look at compared to our previous visit. Just find a seat and sit down and listen, just like a school room. The minimal displays were nice but that’s about all. We loved the old displays where you could recognise items. They were a feast for the eyes. Could not share the experience at the time. Today it was just like hearing a lot of podcasts looking at a picture of the author.

I understand with COVID numbers have to be under control but 3 sets of caravaners that I met gave it all a miss when trying to get tickets. One was told to book for three days time. I rang and it took over 12 minutes to get a price list but finding out what the prices included or excluded was frustrating. Trying to lock down a time was also too hard for me to do with other issues to attend to. Just rolled up in the end and listening to one girl explaining and setting up the group took so long we nearly walked out. Luckily the girl that served us was succinct and it was quick to set up. All this and there was only 9 others there. Social distancing was not an issue.

One set of headphones refused to work in the tv room that was showing old shows of the outback.(Not the cinema) When I returned them I was told that “well they probably weren’t meant to work”!

Such happy memories from years ago looking at the memorabilia and the stories behind the person meant so much more to me than an interactive picture of the silhouette of cattle dogs and stockman. It was such a fleeting image compared to the...

VERY DISAPPOINTED. For anyone who has been here before, you will be so disappointed at the lack of exhibits and the lack of text to read about what they have exhibited. I came years ago (and sure things will change... but...) I spent 4-5 hours here just drawn in to each exhibit and I'm sure I did not see everything that day. They had hundreds of individual exhibits with detailed descriptions of each. They had a de-commissioned telephone exchange, the brand book of a year in the 1950s where I looked up my Father's brand and so many more things I was hoping to show my son today but had to ask if they had moved things to another building because I was done in no time at all. Today they wasted SO much space with no history about the exhibits, eg - I had to tell my son what the 2 wool presses were, because they had nothing about them, a big "bar" area with a couple of photos on the wall but nothing about pubs in Australia, a rodeo section with no substance, an area with a stage and set of (musical) drums but no information, a huge section for RFDS with a couple of huge photos etc but again hardly information apart form some iPads that you had to wait to run their loop to get the full story... so annoying and if it was a busy time, you would never get to even see those. They had a big section with Jimmy Sharman's boxing tent photos but didn't even tell us what years they started / finished, what parts of Australia they went to etc. All stuff that would have been interesting. Unless they get some real substance to the exhibits again I will never return or recommend anyone goes there either. Could be tremendously informative and interesting, as it has been in the past, but progress has destroyed this once great...

$40 entry felt expensive for what the museum offered.

I was really looking forward to visiting as I grew up on bush stories and spent my fair share of time mustering cattle.

The audio element of the tour felt contrived and whilst it had a wistful Aussie story-telling energy, the facts/evidence were hard to discern from the creative license. I found the audio didn’t pair in with the visual displays, as the artefacts and display pieces often weren’t mentioned, and had no physical captions or info that told you about them.

Some of the showcase items appeared to be replicas, however there was no way to discern, again no reference points for where in the audio they would be spoken about.

The information was all quite surface level, with more of an emphasis on dramatised stories than real facts and historical integrity.

For example, they had a small area devoted to the sport of campdrafting, in which the only information was a surface overview of what campdrafting is, and that it was done by stockmen, hardly insightful - no dates or interesting information, i.e first camp draft, locations, crowd numbers, prizes etc.

There was a few good stories, I enjoyed Edna - the first female drover, and the creation of the australian stock saddle. I also enjoyed the welcome to country intro.

I think there is a lot of potential to make the audio component more compelling with the addition of more factual information on items and their provenance - maybe this museum would be interesting to people less familiar with life on the...