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

St George Qld July 14, 2015

Our second day in St George. Still nothing going on. The highlight of the day was going to be a crawl of the 'must sees' in town: emu eggs, Model T at the bakery and wine tasting and lunch at the winery.

St George Qld

First of all, we found the bakery, and had to ask the nice lady about the much publicised 1917 Baker's delivery van. It turned out to be down the back near the shed where her husband may or may not have been 'working' on it. He was nowhere to be seen so she very obligingly left her busy bakery and took us down to have a look. It's just an old car turned out in Bakers livery. It's not even local. We smiled and said all the right things then went looking for the egg.

1917 Model T. Bakery. St George Qld

The 'world class attraction' (it must be true, it's on the sign) is right across the road, nestled in between a cafe, a florist. and a hairdresser. We were getting excited by this time, but when we saw that they wanted $3 a head to go into their shop to look at the eggs..... Well, our interest level plummeted and we walked on by.

Top of the attractions. St George Qld

Then we could wait no longer and headed the 1km down the road to the winery. Naturally, you drive past rows and rows of grape vines before turning down the driveway to the rustic looking shed that obviously doubled as 'the winery'. Having elected not to take the tour of the premises, we sampled a few drops and ordered lunch, which we had at a table out on the lawn in the sun. We had a half bucket of pumpkin soup each followed by a shared ploughman platter, washed down with tea. All rather nice actually.

Me musing on our rather nice lunch and the state of the world if it were not for travellers such as ourselves. Riversands Winery St George Qld

We both are still not brilliant, so an afternoon nap seemed in order. I eventually dragged myself back out into the world and took a walk down the road to the showground where the Yellowbelly Music Festival was almost in full swing. The showground appeared to be packed with caravans and so I was intrigued to see just what was going on, given that the actual show itself doesn't start until Saturday. Sure enough, in the one pavilion, next to the grandstand, there they all were, all neatly lined up in their caravan chairs watching a string of hopefuls going through their paces at the open mike (this goes on for 5 days straight before the main event mind you). I stood enthralled at the entrance and watched as the typical country warblers nasalled and twanged their way through home-written ditties.

These folk know how to have fun. Yellow belly Music festival. Showgrounds. St George Qld

Part of the sea of caravans. Showgrounds. St George Qld

'Grand'-stand. Showground. St George Qld

Enough already, I wandered back to the van and made us some afternoon tea based around a date roll we had bought earlier from the bakery. It too, disappointed as it should have walnuts in it and could only be described as 'bland'. Oh well, lovely sitting in the sun for a change, and you can't argue with that.

St George Qld July 13, 2015

St George Qld July 13, 2015

Bit of a tedious drive up the main highway through traffic and drizzle right up to Moree, where we gratefully hung a left and headed up a secondary highway to St George. It’s fabulous country, big flat expanses of green fields which looked like they were growing canola and then further up cotton.

Thankfully Judy had booked ahead some time ago as there is a country music festival in town and the (only decent looking) van park was fully booked. St George is a nice looking town on the banks of the Barone River, kept at reasonable levels by the Jack Taylor weir. There isn't a lot to do here, it was all I could do to keep a straight and polite face as the nice lady at the info place was waxing lyrical about the emu-egg carving at the local guns / ammo / emu egg carving gallery. Another option is a visit to a winery, which we are saving for tomorrow, and a 95km round trip self-drive tour of the cotton fields, which we might give a miss.

To fill in a few minutes, we went and checked out the aforementioned Jack Taylor weir, before retiring to the van for a wine and bikkie.

On another bright note, we finally have made it to a place in Australia where there is a big yellow ball in the sky, and while not exactly hot, it’s not freezing / grey / raining either, so it gets our tick of approval.

Exposed gum. Barone River, St George Qld

Jack taylor Weir. Barone River, St George Qld

Judy and Ford. Barone River, St George Qld

 Barone River, St George Qld