ARNO'S WALL - AN OUTDOOR OUTBACK MUSEUM

Every night on your Ozzie Adventures, you look up in the sky and see the southern cross.  The center of the cross is the location of the celestial south pole, and the height of the cross above the horizon is your latitude in the southern hemisphere.  If you want to see the Southern Cross in the daytime, you can visit Arno's Wall in Winton, Queensland.



Arno's Wall is a collection of memorabilia from the last century and beyond.  Arno dabbles in paint, although it is not his forte.  His wall sculpture would not be complete without the Southern Cross in relief against the clear blue Ozzie sky with an inlaid map of Australia.  The multimedia wall records a hundred years of history with an outback attitude.



The Glitter and Glitz Gate is the home of automotive chrome.  Hiding behind the shining wall is a large truck with an imposing black bull bar.  All kangaroos in the audience -  pay attention.  When the silver gate swings open, a bone crushing roo bar awaits wayward kangaroos.
 

The wall has something for everyone.  The wall tells the history of the outback in mortar and stone.  But even more important, it reveals the story of every person who walks along the wall.  It's like a Rorschach test of the twentieth century.  By the time a person walks the wall and identifies the objects in wall that they recognize, you will know whether that person is a city slicker, an outback veteran, a miner, a railroader, or a feral.  If you know everything on the wall, you are an unusual person indeed, and you could give history lessons on the outback.  Windmill blades, scales, sewing machines, wheels, springs, ovens, electric boxes and everything that made the outback into the outback is all there.



The wall eternally entombs a black statue with a couple of helmets above the statue's head.  A sewing machine and perhaps a red fire extinguisher stand ready for action only in your mind.

Weights and measures were important in the outback.  If you follow the trail of scales in the wall, you understand that 100 years ago, life happened in bulk.  If you weighed something, the answer came out in pounds rather than grams.  The outback was a pound place, and grams are the weights and measures of the city, unless of course you are a gold miner.  Even a hundred years ago, miners lived by the ounce.

The outback was a place for lots of gears, and most of them are big.  No tiny gears here.  You can estimate the age of a gear by looking at it's size and construction.  Ancient outback gears achieved their purpose by beating their work into submission.  Big was beautiful in the outback.

There aren't any sissy sinks in the outback.  Sinks are the size of small bathtubs.

Gears. guages, and wheels are stuff from which outback dreams were made.  If you had lots of gears, gages, and wheels in your life, you had a job.  And if you owned all those gears, gages, and wheels, you became a rich man.

Arno's wall has its obligatory compressor.  It's big, bulky, and bold.  The only difference between this outback compressor and a modern one is its heft.  An air tank, belt drive, and a fan built into the compressor pulley are all there.  You could bounce 45 caliber bullets off the air tank without puncturing it.  That compressor looks outback tough.

Arno's wall would not be complete without a yellow concrete mixer on display.  I searched diligently for a battlefield Howitzer artillery gun embedded in the wall, and as best I can tell, it's not there.  I guess that means they didn't have Howitzers in the outback.

What happens when a Harley Davidson hits a wall of wet concrete?  I'm not sure, but it's probably something like the two motorcycles embedded in Arno's wall.