“On the road again”! It’s good-bye to Moonie, next stop who knows. Hopefully somewhere with internet service. As we were coming into Condamine, my Darl noticed a road sign saying – Road to Roma closed – a few expletives flew around, we’ll have to go back to Dalby. I reckoned how about we ask someone after my pit stop. Now the sign to the Public Toilets wasn’t that clear and I ended up doing a bit of a cross country through a vacant grassy block, I looked down and found a mobile phone with a name on the back.
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| Monument to honour Samuel W Jones, blacksmith who invented the famous Condamine Bell |
What to
do with this? I asked a couple local
looking ladies if this person was a local, they were both adamant not and there
had been a footy game here over the week-end.
I crossed over the vacant block again and picked up a $10 note!! Well
that was my reward, I handed the phone in to the BP Servo and asked the lads
out front about the road to Roma – there’s two roads to Roma one of which is
closed and the other via Miles is open, that was the direction we were headed
in so all is sweet. We passed through Miles, then Jackson – another sign advising that there is numerous road works from here to Roma and they weren’t kidding.
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| Crops in the fields, the cotton is all harvested |
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| Roadworks all the way to Roma |
We cruised along behind a
water tank road train for the whole trip, it wasn’t so bad as he was hammering
to get somewhere. Decided to stop at
Roma tonight. Now this is the “Big Rig”
town – we stayed at the Big Rig Van Park across the road from the Big Rig Oil
Patch and Night Show, which was by the Big Rig railway station (a tourist
ride). That there be oil rig not truck
rig. We got some supplies, had walk
through town, noticed the queue for putting lotto on was out along the
footpath, we felt like telling them they had no chance tonight in the $70 mill
cause it was ours, or part there of as we are not greedy, we will share…… a
reasonable amount.
We've seen a cockatoo or two on the trip, but not in the numbers that greeted us when we pulled up at the Info Centre at Roma. Thousands of cockys headed for the trees around the park. Gees don't look up Darl! But alas one did manage to target my Darl, lucky he had his cap on this time, but it also splattered over the fridge, lucky it was closed. You know it is good luck if you get shat on and we do have our lotto in for tonight.
Some beautiful wood turned telephones which caught my eye in the Big Rig centre - all dinky di working phones. I was very tempted, what a great "talking" piece (in more ways than one).
Downtown Roma, no traffic lights here, zebra crossings on each corner. Among the attractions Roma has to offer, is the Roma Saleyards - almost a national icon having held the mantle of Australia's largest selling centre for a number of years, with throughputs of over 12,000 head per sale. Public can attend the Tuesday and Thursday sales. The streets of Roma are lined with bottle trees, similar looking to the northern WA boabs, their trunks are full with water.
Over a hundred years ago, on Roma's Hospital Hill, a drilling crew was boring for water when, suddenly, the unexpected happened: 'Strewth, it's gas!' exclaimed a surprised driller as gas, mud and water gushed out of the well. With this event, quite by accident, Australia's oil and gas industry was born and still continues strongly in this district to this day.....
A bottle tree by the camp kitchen, The Bull Ring. The van park suffered in the recent floods back in early February, new carpet had to be laid in the office. Note the clear blue skies, makes for some chilly nights and morning.
In the arvo we took a short path (I walked, Darl rode pushie) along the Agungadoo Pathway from Big Rig Parklands. This follows the Bungil Creek for 1.7 km where ancient river gums are a feature. Popular for bird watchers and those on health kick for walking, cycling, jogging even – plus they have exercise centres along the way for those wanting a bit of a gym workout – we passed on that today.
Left - Another one of those moments, "can you guess what this is?" There were several of these throughout the park along Bungil Creek. |
| An old river gum, among river gums |
Roma strikes me as a working man town, farmers,cattlemen and
miners. I was surprised to see on the
front page of this outback country town paper, 1st birthday
celebration party was held at week-end for the Gay and Lesbian group, Anything
but Straight. A sign of the
times. We were pleased the temperature
didn’t get down to minus 4 here, as Geoff experienced last year on his way to
Weipa. We were happy we also missed the floods here
– 7 in 2 years is really a bit much isn’t it.
We were told by other travelers that a big development built just outside of town, now worsens the height of the flood waters through town, you gotta wonder about some town planners now don’t you? By the way, we had no luck whatsoever with winning the 70 mill, not even a cent....looks like it's back to the grind stone for us, a few more weeks to go yet though. At the right School of Arts Hotel the site of a number of hotels, the present establishment built in 1918 at 10,000 pounds
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