TOD Tour 2.0 Day 6 - Roma

Lightning Ridge to Roma: 446 kms (trip 956 kms)

Only a short hop to make today to Roma: an overnight stay to stock up on food and fuel prior to going off grid tomorrow. We were there in little over an hour and headed to one of the few attractions we hadn’t seen in two previous visits.

St Paul’s Anglican Church is in its second building, it’s foundation stone laid in 1913. The first building dated back to 1876. It is a high roofed, typically Church of England design, with the building in the shape of the cross and the sanctuary in the headstock of the design. It has two outstanding features: one is the 567 pipe organ which is located at the back of the church and the other are the 39 stained glass and 11 lead light glass window.

The organ is a rarity. Originally installed in 1927 at the front of the church - as is convention - it was moved to the back for reasons which are obscure but it seems feasible that it was to keep it safe from the plastering of the columns that were installed at a later date. Unfortunately it is rarely played as there is no one with the requisite skills. The parish is also currently without a minister.


The windows are exquisite. The oldest dates back to the establishment of the original church and these days it has been retired from active service and is back lit in a cabinet near the front of the church. There are many traditional figures depicted in the holy scenes but a series of windows high in the walls which are all lead lights, were designed by the vicars wife in the 1970s. Their  colours are vibrant and the morning sun streams through them, casting the pews into a rainbow of colours.

Volunteers take visitors through the church and explain the history. We had the added bonus of a bus load of oldies arriving and one of them asking if he could play the organ. Two of his mates - a bass and baritone - joined him on Amazing Grace and I threw my tenor in on the subsequent verses. The place had a beautiful tone.

After booking in at our digs and deciding our movements over subsequent days, we found a coffee shop - naturally - then wandered among the bottle trees that were planted to commemorate the soldiers from Roma who enlisted in WWI. Each life was assigned a tree, so that they would never be forgotten: one of the most poignant memorials a community has provided anywhere in Australia.

Click for today's photos

We did the Woolworths thing and on our way back to our digs, went to the parkland to the east of the city to view Roma’s biggest bottle tree. It has a trunk that is 6 metres high and 9.1 meters in girth.

Slow day.

Good!

Qld Outback Tour - The Return Day 3

Augathella - Morven - Roma - St George ... 465kms

A shorter day in the saddle after making some adjustments to the rapid itinerary home. Yesterday's 611kms played merry hell with Sue's back and to be honest, problems I had been having before we left on this tour, were resurfacing for the first time.

Our night at Augathella was quiet, well apart from the double and triple semis roaring past us about seventy metres away. We dined in the trucker's cafe which was part of the road house, motel, caravan park cartel. The food was limited in range but well prepared and had a heavy accent on red meat. This was my third night of steak in a row and my colon was scream abuse at me from the moment my plate was put in front of me. The two ladies - I think sisters - who prepared the food, did a really good job. It my fussy and pampered diet that was the problem.

The caravan park section is not a place where people do more than spend a night in transit. Power and water, a hot shower in dilapidated show blocks. Dirt sites, no slabs and of course the passing parade of Macks and Louivilles. There was a nice covered area - imagine a big shed with no sides - which had bar-b-qs, a washing up sink and tables. A redeeming feature was shower cubicle doors which open outwards. Anyone who has stayed in caravan parks will know what I mean when they stop and think about it.

Anyway. Anyway.

On the road at 8:00am and an hour later we stopped for old times sake at Morven. Ten years ago, Morven was the first stop we made on the second day of our big adventure to Western Australia and short though the stop was, it was memorable because of the shop there and its owner, Jill.

Sadly, the shop is no more, replaced by the Pick A Box Motel: so called because each room is a separated corrugated iron clad "box" and when you check in by calling the mobile number on the sign, you pick your box. Even more sadly, Jill passed away last year. We got the low down at the new shop and the Post Office, where the post master made us a cup of tea and provided a biscuit. Ah Qld. I shall miss you.

Across the road is a shed constructed entirely of flattened kerosene tins. In the Depression, five of were constructed and arranged in a circle, with one tap placed in the centre of the circle. They prided homes for the homeless and men traveling through looking for work.

The next stretch was a solid two hours to Roma and lunch at the well known Big Rig. No sightseeing - no time - just lunch and moving on. Alas, not even time to go and see Bottle Tree Lane. After listening to Rod Stewart during the led to Roma at Sue's request, I was no mood to be generous with time. I was as though part of my life that I won't get back had just been eaten by ballads designed to seduce teenage girls.

Click to see today's photos

Soon outside of Roma we tuned south for the remaining two hundred or so kilometres to St George.

Lots of trees again, paddocks and more than one cow per forty hectares.

The outback was long behind us.

Toowoomba - Chinchilla - Roma - Morven - Charleville

Toowoomba - Chinchilla - Roma - Morven - Charleville 621(1385)kms

Woke to an overcast Toowoomba, before dawn, after a settled night’s sleep, our first on the road snuggled up in the back Forester. Pack up was smooth and we were on the road by 7:30am. After fuel ($1.64/L) we were out of town by 7:45am.

Morven Cafe

Chinchilla was our morning tea stop and the Tourist Information Centre served us up a scrumptious and cheap Devonshire tea. The conversation with the lady serving us was interesting. She was the female equivalent of the Sheik of Scrubby Creek – a lady whose self-given title was the Cactoblaster Kid. Most likely in her early forties - although carbon dating can be unreliable - she was badly hungover from her hen's night. I couldn't describe how she looked without being cruel. In fact, to stay positive, let me say this ... she got our change right.

On to Roma and the Big Rig which is ... a ... big ... rig. It’s a show about the discovery and manufacture of natural gas. We avoided the commercial venture and had lunch with the ducks, although one of them asked me for two dollars when I took his picture. Sue took some pictures of the bottle trees. Fuel in Roma was $1.68/L.

Afternoon tea stop was at Morven ... one of those small villages you find a long way from civilisation. We ordered a chocolate milkshake (Sue) and a mug of tea (Peter) and really enjoyed our two chocolate milkshakes! In fact, it was the most enjoyable cup of tea I had ever tasted, given that it tasted like a chocolate milkshake ... which, in fact, it was. Sue photographed the public toilets with some unusual murals and an old shed made from squashed kerosene tins. Meanwhile I was pulling the hub apart on the trailer as the bearings seemed loose and was soon making do with half a split pin.

The land was getting flatter, the road speed limits higher and the road kill more prolific as we head to Charleville. It was a long day - 631 km - but a very friendly welcome at the Bailey Bar Caravan Park. After we ate Sue's steaks cooked in the camping kitchen, we were off to see a the Charleville Bilby Experience ... some say the lucky marsupial and judging from the roadside, I'd say they were right.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

The Forester had returned 11.43 L/100 km yesterday over the Ranges. I expect a much better result
tomorrow after the basically flat run

AUC 1995 - Roma

Roma (Qld)
Moree, Munglindi, St George, Surat, Roma (Carnarvon Highway) 436 kms

After our wonderful evening with the Richardson's, we took our leave - with difficulty - and headed to the shops to stock up for our time ahead in Carnarvon Gorge NP.

This was to be one of our longest days on the road for the entire journey and was necessitated by the desire to put some of the long stretches leading to the places we wanted to see, behind us. Our path took us roughly north, through the border town of Mungindi and over our first real dirt road of the
trip. The car was already showing the legacy of road works on the southern outskirts of Moree: a fact that was made the more galling by the cleaning I had given it the day before departure.

Mungindi nestles on the Barwon River and looks like "just a place". I had heard many tales about it, but the fact that a colleague had once taught there seemed to be more than it deserved in terms of a reputation and we passed through without giving it as much space in our day as this paragraph.

Lunch was had beside the Balonne River - fittingly we had processed cold meat on our sandwiches - in the namesake of my favourite football team, St George. The town is the centre of a rich cotton growing district, as the roadside litter would indicate. On the southern approach, the large cotton gin was an intriguing sight, with the yards liberally littered with the large "bales" of cotton that are collected in bins and road transported to the gin. The extensive irrigation system surrounding St George has led to this success with cotton, but other crops such as wheat, barley, oats and sunflowers are also important cash crops from the locals. With sheep and cattle also having important roles to play in the local economy, the area has many similarities - in land use only - with Tambar Springs.

The children were excited to see signs indicating the bag limits allowed when fishing in the Balonne, but those wise sages among us saw too close a relationship with the sign, to the implied nature of the river, as indicated by its name. We passed on, without serious temptation to dangle the lines !

After our lunch break, it was on to Surat, where we had a stretch of the legs and then put the head down for the final leg to Roma.

Our overnight camp was at Roma Villa Caravan Park. Our powered sight was $3 cheaper than expected because the proprietor declined to charge for all of the children. He commented that costs sky rocketed when travelling with kids and as he had done it when he was younger, he liked to help families out who were staying together and seeing their country. Thoroughly decent of him, really. I guess it just goes to show that you don't have to be a pensioner to get the odd discount!

We pitched the overnight dome and each busied ourselves with chores towards the common good.

Our evening meal was a very palatable stew courtesy of Sam and Sue. Each of the children began their journals, as did I and we settled off to sleep as the cool of the evening descended upon us. The only bummer of the evening was my tardiness in turning on the phone, which meant I missed a call from Dad by about five minutes. The switch-on was accompanied by an immediate page from the electronic mail box and a message from Dad complaining that he had wasted his eighty cents in an attempt to do us a good deed!

The very pleasing aspect of the two days driving had been the fuel consumption, which appeared to be much less than on previous trips with the trailer. We have previously found that our range was only about 400 km, but we traveled well in excess of that on this day and still have not reached the final 10L warning light. Tomorrow's fill up will tell a story, but the change to a higher tow ball seems to have the car sitting in a more balanced posture .