Roma Qld. July 12th 2023

 

Roma Qld. July 12th 2023

Before we hit the road today I took an early morning walk up to the artesian bore spa and a had a bit of a soak in the 40°C mineral laden water. Supposed to be good for all manner of kinds of complaints. Always busy, night and day. It's free and you just walk in and jump in the pool. Quite refreshing given that the air temperature was about nothing. I also grabbed a great snap, looking back up the road toward the spa, with the sun shining through the steam coming off the spa and blanketing the road.

Steam and fog from the artesian bore spa. Lightning Ridge NSW

But then we had to leave and tackle the 420km run up through Hebel, Dirranbandi, St George and on and on up through Surat and on to Roma. Pretty straightforward but a bit tiring. Quite pleased to pull into the Big Rig Van park and have a bit of a chill out.

Roma, Qld 26JUly2022 422km

 Roma, Qld 26 July2022 422km

Today’s travel was delayed while I rewired the caravan trailer plug. It’s always the same, you check the lights, as we do every time, and one isn’t working. It’s always the plug and as soon as you open it up it becomes evident that its a wonder anything was working at all! Oh well, did what I needed to do to fix the immediate problem/s and promise to fix it properly... one day.

We were taking the back way up to Roma via St George and Surat. But first a very welcome stop after 122km of rough-riding through to Mungindi, right on the border. Actually there are two Mungindi towns, one in NSW and one in Queensland, The town is tiny but had a great coffee shop and bakery. We chatted to a local farmer who said it had only just stopped raining and the rivers were still rising. You would never know, it was a  glorious sunny warm day. We also asked about the pronunciation of the town name, and for you interest it is ‘Mung’, as in mung-bean, ’n’, as in cat ’n dog, and ‘di’ as in die, ‘mungndie’.

Fixer-upper Mungindi, NSW

Right outside town you cross the border, even if we didn’t notice it as we were too busy admiring how swollen the Barwon River was. Oh, that’s right, it is the border....

Speaking of borders, and you only find these things out after you’ve left the place, just to the west of Mungindi is a ‘one ton post’. Erected in 1881 by J Cunningham after he staggered in from Cameron Corner, where he had left a similar ‘one ton post’ to mark the other end of the 29th parallel, which is of course the border between NSW and Qld. This one is the original timber post, whereas the one at Camerons corner had to be replaced by a concrete pillar due to vandalism from 10,000 tourist a year. 

Furher up the road, which had thankfully settled down to a smoother ride, we cruised through Thallon, ‘famous’ for its painted silos, which we chose to not stop and gawp up. You be the judge, would you have stopped?

Silos at Thallon, Qld

On and on we pushed up and right on through St George, where we have stopped a few times already and thought we would fuel up at Surat 100+ kms to the East. Just outside St George, in the distance we could see a road train pull out onto the road ahead of us. Rats. Whats worse than one road train in front of you? Two of course. Now while the first one had plenty of time, that second one could and probably should, have waited. As it turned out, once they got the behemoths wound up to 100kph, they stayed rock solid at that speed for the entire way. I dialled in 99kph and followed them at a sensible distance, right across to Roma, as it turned out. Apart from two caravans doing snail-an-hour speed, the only other vehicles going our way were another road train and a truck with a wide load, both of which passed us and went and joined their mates up ahead. Good on all of them. 

Speaking of Surat, there was no fuel, a fact that came back to haunt us as we knew that from our previous trip this way, when we read of the closure of the Surat Servo in the local paper while drinking coffee in the carved Emu-egg coffee shop in St George in 2017. The quick calculation showed we had 122km range and it was 80km to go. No worries, as long as there are no hills.

Made it into Roma after five-and-a-half hours into a very welcome spot at the Big Rig Caravan Park. Much seemed appropriate as it was after 3pm. A dog’s eye and dead-horse at the local bakery also seemed an appropriate way to remedy the situation of a late lunch.

Clermont Qld. 27 July 2017

Up and away early from Roma, we have a long drive ahead, some 515km to Clermont. The road north out of Roma isn't brilliant, and gets quite hilly as we cross over the ranges onto the plateau. One thing we noticed was the number of vans travelling south, don't they know its still cold down there? There is one section of 'development' road, which is quite narrow but reasonably smooth and not as daunting as the map makes out. The thing is, there is a lot of not much between Roma and Rolleston, where we stopped after 250km for a rest.

Last time we came through here there was next to nothing in this quaint little town, a single short street with a few down-at-heel shops and a park. This time however, the park was sporting a coffee van run by volunteers raising money to beautify the park, and by the look of the park, doing a great job. There was at least twenty vans parked in the street and everyone was waiting for the coffee; and using the loos and checking out the old post office and the museum. The lady in the van reckons it's this busy from the time they open until closing, every day of the week. What a great initiative - good on them!

Coffee waggon doing a great job at Rolleston, Qld

Main Street,  Rolleston, Qld

From Rolleston its an easy drive up to Springsure, which looks like a nice place to stay a while. Unfortunately on the way a large truck slammed my driver's side mirror flat with its bow wave and the attached trailer mirror flew off into oblivion. We didn't even back off; there was no point, it would have been smashed to pieces for sure. From Springsure to Emerald the road opens up a bit and we started to make better time, reaching Emerald in time for a refuel and lunch in the park.

Finally, we reached Clermont some 120km up the road from Emerald, but an easy drive. The van park at Clermont has undergone a sort of resurrection: it was pretty worn out last time, and this year it's all nice and shiny. All the old vans have been pushed out into the back paddock, where they will be 'accidentally' consumed by flames in due course, and there are heaps of new cabins and dongas. Obviously there is more happening around Clermont than a bit of gemstone fossicking, which is why the majority of vanners are here. They're worse than fisherman, 'you should have seen the stone this bloke got - it was this big!' Good on them.

But there is this gem in the Clermont Caravan Park Rules which makes all this travel worthwhile:

'There is no dump point [a dump point is where you empty your caravan's toilet] in the caravan park. The dump point is located in Lime Street near the toilet block next to the Bowels Club'

Its way better than the one from Townsville a few years ago:

'No children passed this point'

Good night readers.

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

Roma Qld July 16 2015

Roma Qld. July 16, 2015

Up early and down to the cattle saleyards to see the country folk at work. Thursday is 'Prime' day, what that means is that these cattle are all heading to the meat works. It was a slow day, only 1600 head going through, but boy do they make some action. It's just so fast and so slick. The cattle are penned into smaller lots - maybe 20 at most in each pen. The Auctioner and circus walk along the high walkway between the pens, the buyers are at cow level on the other side of the pen. You have to listen really close to understand what's going on, but basically, they rattle of the lot number, the type of cattle and the price - in cents per kilo. The buyer is buying the pen lot at a given price per kilo, a weight that is measured later.

The sellers. Cattle stockyards. Roma Qld

The first bloke is the auctioneer, the next two are the recorders, the bloke with the pole is the 'paint', who makes each beast with the brand of the buyer - a brand dipped in yellow paint. The last fellow is the 'Reader', who has a RFI tag reader on a long stick. He's only needed if there's and 'out', that is when a buyer wants the pen but not one or more particular beasts, which are then outed, read and put into a sub-lot, which that same buyer normally buys but at a lower price.

The cattle. Cattle stockyards. Roma Qld

 This place can handle something like 10000 head a day. Each one of these cattle was bringing about 200 cents a head or about $1000 each today.

The buyers. Cattle stockyards. Roma Qld

The buyers, maybe 6 to 10, represent 'big business' and many are from the US, where they apparently have a spike in demand for meat at the moment. These blokes have to pay at the end of the day, maybe millions of dollars.

Now, you just can't bring your cows here to sell. No no no. You have to engage a Stock Agent, or more likely, they have already engaged you as they cruise the country touting for business. The agents organise the stock to be transported to Roma, from as far away as Alice Springs, and provide their own auctioneer and crew. The agents also have to pay the growers for all stock within 7 days, so there is a bunch of money changing hands as a result of the sales. The agents get a slice, stockyards get a slice, the truckers get a slice and the farmer, well he'll be lucky if there's anything much left!

Her's another agents crew. Cattle stockyards. Roma Qld

As soon as each pen is sold, the cattle are moved out. The whole place is a maze of gates and shuts, all operated by the ringers to steer (sorry) the cattle back out past the scanners, where each ID tag is read again, then into a special weighing pen where the lot is weighed and then out to the holding yards where they are loaded onto the trucks.

Cutting 'em out of the pen. Stockyards. Roma Qld

This is what they love, when a stroppy cow wants to get stubborn and not move out. YeeHa!. Stockyards. Roma Qld

It's fantastic to watch these blokes on the horses, they just sit there as if glued on, the horse responding in a second to every move of the cattle and the pressure from the rider's knees.

There are displays for all the world to see how much each lot went for. This one shows Lot 141, price paid 187 cents per kilo, average weight 500 kilo and average price per beast $936.

Phew!

After so much excitement we went on a bit of an attraction crawl. First, the big bottle tree:

Then the stained glass in St Paul's. Now I have stepped into a few churches around the place, and the thing that strikes you the moment you walk through the door is : OMG it's ugly! It looks like it's been built with concrete blocks, and guess what? It has, except they made the blocks themselves, and very proud of them too, they are. You can see the lime leaching out all over the walls, and its just so cold and sterile. They had a big working bee and cement rendered the columns and arches in matching smooth cement...

The only saving grace are the many satined glass windows, 15 of which are from the original church that they bulldozed in 1913 to build this thing, but reused the glass. And the hideous swing screen doors. The place looks like it needs acid washing to get rid of the stains, and then rendering with stone coloured render....

St Pauls. Roma Qld

St Pauls. Roma Qld

The new stained glass is very colourful..

St Pauls. Roma Qld

St Pauls. Roma Qld

 Next was the courthouse where the infamous Harry Redford - king of the cattle duffers, was tried after being caught red-handed after stealing a 1000 head of cattle from Bowen Downs Station near Longreach in 1870. The good people who made up the jury were so impressed by his cattle drive from Bowen Downs to Maree in SA (only 10 years after Burke and Wills died on the same track) and possibly by his daring, that they declared him 'Not Guilty'! The building is on the spot where the original courthouse was, as this one was built in 1901, the same year Harry pegged-out.

Courthouse, Roma Qld

 Further out of town, about 10km, is the fabled Mt Abundance Station, from whence Ludwig Leichhardt went wandering off on his quest to reach the Swan River in WA in 1848, never to be seen again. The property is open to the public, but only on Sundays, as they have to work full time jobs to make enough cash to stay alive.

Mt Abundance Station. Roma Qld

On the way back into town, you have to stop and take a snap of the Southern Cross Windmill. built in 1950 and bille as the 'biggest one in commercial use'. I'm not even sure that this is it, as it doesn't look any bigger than heaps of others we've seen, nor do i have any idea what the commercial use is, apart from advertising the solar & pump place and recycling the water from that tank, over and over

Souther Cross windmill. Roma Qld

So much excitement! Next on the list was the Hero's Trail. A great idea where they planted 138 bottle trees along a few streets, one for each fallen soldier in WWI, and marked each one with a cairn and a plaque. Not easy to even go close to getting a decent picture, but here goes

Bottle trees on Hero's Walk. Roma Qld

Talking of bottle trees, they of course have 'the biggest' one back down near the van park

Brian and the Big Bottle tree. Roma Qld

The other 'must-see' in town is a 3D mural inside the council chambers, which is actually pretty impressive, especially if you sit and listen to the commentary explaining what each part represents. Shame the light part wasn't working and also a shame that the Council Chambers Foyer is as cold as charity (what else would you expect?)

3d Mural. Roma Qld

3d Mural. Roma Qld

3d Mural. Roma Qld

that's it then, a tourists day out in Roma, Queensland.

Roma Qld July 15, 2015

Roma Qld July 15, 2015

Drove a leisurely 200 km up to Roma today, stopping at a lovely little town called Surat for a coffee and wander about. Its claim to fame is that it is where the last ever Cobb & Co coach went from, in 1926, and that very coaching change station became a store and various others things before being rescued and turned into the delightful Cobb & Co museum. They have a fully restored C&C 14 person coach, which is much bigger than others that we have seen in other places. Apart from it’s size, it was pulled by 7 horses, in two rows of 3 & 4. The run from Surat to Yaleba about 75km, required 40 horses and 5 grooms and the driver for the one way run. No wonder they caved in to the new wonder of the century, the motor omnibus. Another building of interest is this rather unique looking town hall:

Town Hall. Surat Qld

Surat Qld

Cobb & Co 14 person coack. Surat Qld

Ferrier Wool Press. Surat Qld 

Surat Qld

Cobb & Co museum, on the corner of Carnarvon Highway. Surat Qld

Anyhow, we rolled into Roma after a trouble free run to find that its a big sprawling kind of place, the major industry is Coal Seam Gas exploration and exploitation, along with the biggest cattle saleyard in Australia.

We only get to stay in Roma due to Judy’s foresight in booking well ahead: the van park hung out the ‘Full’ sign just as we pulled up, just as they did in St George the other day. We would have liked to visit Carnarvon Gorge, but it's full as well. Must be all us sun & warmth seeking travellers from down south. Not that it’s warm yet, today has been overcast all day, and any hint of warmth was stamped out as soon as dusk rolled in.

Roma kept ringing a bell deep in my childhood thoughts: it was a subject covered at school in social studies and had something to do with oil and gas. At the Big Rig, the information centre just over the road from the van park, they had an informative display about the town's origins and also had a night show on offer for just $8 (senior concession!). So, at the allotted time we went to the open air theatre, and with the help of gas heaters and blankets managed to sit through a very entertaining 45 minute video presentation, with special effects, of those early days and the initial search for artesian water that became the search for gas and oil. As a bonus to my more recent interest in history, Ludwig Leichhardt; was last seen on the Mt Abundance station just west of Roma before he disappeared on his ill fated attempt in 1848 to cross Australia and come out at the Swan River in WA 

One last snap, it's rubbish but the best I could do given the ambient light and lack of tripod (why did i leave it at home?). It's one of the original well-heads that they saved and brought into the info centre so that they could call it .... 'The Big Rig'

The Big Rig. Roma Qld