Roma Qld 19/20 July 2019

Roma Qld 19/20 July 2019

Leaving Lightning Ridge and heading north, the road continued to be a bit of a struggle, not as bad as before but not quite right either. However, past Hebel, which is in Queensland and on to St George it is in much better repair and makes for a safer more enjoyable trip. And you, it weren't to safe for the literally hundreds of 'roos splattered all over the place, mile after mile, some in groups of ten or so. As J Williamson sings, 'Birds flying round with a knife and fork, dam good feed for an eagle hawk'.

We had lunch in St George at a cafe that derives its fame from having engraved emu eggs, if you like that sort of thing. One reason I wanted to stop here was to see if the Town Fathers had paid any tribute to Len Waters, Australia's only Aboriginal fighter pilot, who earned his stripes flying a    Kittyhawk he named 'Black Magic' in New Guinea during World War II.

We ended up at the Info place and I asked the nice lady if she had ever heard of Len Waters and if there was a monument to him in town, and was surprised by her enthusiastic, 'Yes of course'. I was even more surprised when, upon asking for directions to see the monument she smiled and pointing through the front door said, 'No problem, it's right outside'.

John Johnson (left) & Len Waters (right) memorials. Surat Qld

Now fortunately for us, we like to read the local papers during lunch, and the one we read had the Surat service station up for sale, and it looked permanently closed. As we were about to pull out and head for Roma via Surat, a distance of some 240km, prudence dictated that we fill up before we leave as we wouldn't make it on less than half a tank. And a good choice too as there were no signs untrue way out of town to alert one to this situation, and sure enough it was closed. Surat is home to a rather nicely restored Cobb and Co coach, 'the last one to run' (in this area). We didn't stop so I'll sneak an old snap in for fun.

My main objective in Roma was to participate in their Parkrun event, which starts in the park right next to the van park, at the unseemly time of 7am in winter when it's zero or fewer degrees. I wore my Canberra Winter Parkrun kit, thank you. Actually it wasn't too bad as there was no wind and the sun started sneaking up at about half-past seven. The run itself is quite pleasant being a proper path that runs along the creek, down a long road, back, and out again up another bit of the creek before returning to the start.

There is not a lot of sights-to-see in Roma, especially if you've been here before, so we knocked over the Biggest Bottle Tree (in Roma), checked out the Roma Bush Gardens (a 20 year work-in-progress) which has been formed around the original water supply for the steam trains, drank coffee, and of course, wandered around the shops. The farmer's market as advertised in the brochure we found,  wasn't on. Puzzled, we asked the Info people about it who were perplexed until they discovered that the brochure we had found at the cafe was from 2014! We chuckled about this as apparently we were the fourth enquiry about this very thing this morning.

Roma Bush Gardens. Roma Qld

Bottle tree. Roma Qld

Roma, Qld July 26 2017

Transport day, a 425km leg from Lightning Ridge to Roma. After passing through Hebel the next town is Dirranbandi, where we stopped for a coffee and rest. The roads are good enough with the proviso that they can be quite bumpy at times, not pot-holed, just not flat and smooth - you tend to do a bit or porpoising because its hard to tell when the undulations will hit, except for the cattle-grids, of which there are many. Hebel is touted in Lightning Ridge as an attraction, mainly because of the pub and a 'restaurant', and as far as we could see, there wasn't much of anything else. We did see the strangest thing some time out of Hebel. Out there, in the middle of nothing, there was this black and white dog (think Dog from Footrot Flats) sitting on top of a dog-box of sorts, on the side of the road. It was chained to the said dog-box and eagerly awaiting the return of its master. One could only assume it was there for a reason, maybe it was guarding something important, like a slab of FourX. Who knows. Dirranbandi is the neatest, nicest looking one street town you will ever see. You just had to stop and wander back to the bakery come cafe, where we drank coffee and admired the Russian influenced cakes and of course the brilliant Samovar.

On and on we went, driving straight through St George despite it's charm and coffee shops, right up and into Surat, where we easily found the park by the Balonne river and enjoyed a nice lunch in the van. Just out of town, and on that same river is a nice enough looking free camp, already jam packed at 2.30pm.

We cruised into Roma at about 3 o'clock and settled in, followed by a run to the shops for food and a walk through the very pleasant adjacent park.

Sadly the 'Big Rig Oil and Gas Interpretative Centre and Night Show for an interactive insight into the hardships and heroic stories of oil drilling and exploration' has been cancelled for tonight, and the next cattle sale isn't until Friday, so we'll just have to take an early night and head out first thing in the morning for Charters Towers