Last day of 2015 - busy from sunrise to sunset (and not too hot)! Here's a rundown of our activities:

• Tour of Charleville Bureau of Meteorology Weather Station: on arrival Scott the Weather Observer explained that tours were not really his thing, but he did a pretty good job of explaining the various instruments out in the yard that he used to take the observations at 9am - such as evaporation, surface temperatures at various depths, rainfall, air temperature and barometric pressure. Of particular interest was the 'halo' around the sun this morning - it's called a Cirrostratus and is kind of like a rainbow around the sun. At 9.15am we observed the automatic release of the weather balloon which sends data back about air temperature, wind direction and speed - it explodes at about 30,000 feet and parachutes down into some lucky person's backyard! Scott also showed us the desktop applications he uses including the one tracking the balloon just released - it was a really interesting hour, and very educational for all of us.

• Royal Flying Doctor Service: This information centre contained some of the original communications equipment used last century including a telephone exchange and transmission / 2 way radio. There was audio of exchanges between doctors and their patients and videos with people whose lives had been saved by the service - well worth a visit.

• Outback Native Timber Walk in the Graham Andrews Parklands: This very interesting short walk around the lake was all about understanding the look/feel/indigenous/non-indigenous use of 20 different species of Australian Native Trees - we tested out the Information Centre's draft 'mud map' for future visitors to this area as an extra!

• Vortex Rainmaking Guns: In 1902 during a lengthy drought, a fellow came up with the idea that placing 6 of these contraptions containing gunpowder around Charleville, and having them all explode in unison would change the atmospheric pressure resulting in rain falling - of course it didn't work!

• Drive out to site of catastrophic truck explosion in 2014: Mum noticed on the way in yesterday that the railway bridge had a large section missing which looked odd - turns out that a truck rolled over about 30kms south of Charleville about 15 months ago, and soon after emergency services arrived at the scene there was a massive explosion - the truck's load of ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) reacted with the diesel spilled from the crash - the resulting explosion decimated the road bridge completely as well as part of the nearby railway. The 2 fire trucks were almost unrecognizable -8 people were injured but miraculously there was no loss of life.

• Warrego River Walk: This short walk took us along the riverside - the shiny new exercise equipment also got a workout from Renee!

• Swimming: the day had been getting gradually hotter, so we took ourselves off to the local Olympic pool for a refreshing swim - Renee & Eamon even did a few laps!

• Barefoot Lawn Bowls: it was a beautiful balmy evening, perfect for a spot of lawn bowls and a beverage or 2 - the wrong bias got us a few times!

• Cosmos Observatory - At Night: The cloud cover improved during the course of the session so we were able to see about 7 night sky objects including star clusters, star forming nebulae, coloured stars - the guides were very knowledgeable and Eamon particularly enjoyed the star gazing.

It was New Year's Eve so Mum and Dad finished the day off with a bottle of champagne.