Qantas Founders Museum

The Qantas Founders Museum at Longreach Airport is one of Australia's best aviation museums, and the only place where you can walk through a retired Boeing 747 and stand in the original Qantas hangar where the airline's early operations were based.

The aircraft collection is exceptional: alongside the 747, there is a Boeing 707-138B — the only surviving example of Qantas's first jet in passenger-carrying configuration — a Douglas DC-3, a Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat, and a Lockheed Constellation restored to resemble a vintage Qantas aircraft. A recreation of the Captain Cook Lounge from the 747 era gives a vivid sense of what long-haul travel looked like in the early 1970s.

The heritage hangar, built in 1922, is a Queensland Heritage-listed building and a moving place to stand — rough timber and corrugated iron, built to house aircraft that could barely be imagined at the time. The museum opened in 1996 and has been steadily expanding since. Budget two to three hours; the guided tours of the 747 are worth taking.

things to do museum sight
A story
Qantas began in Longreach in November 1920 as the Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services — two ex-military pilots with one aircraft and a mail contract. The first scheduled passenger service flew a distance of 87 miles and carried one passenger. The airline eventually moved its headquarters to Brisbane, then Sydney, but chose to build this museum back where it started, because Longreach is where the story begins.