We're on the move again....
This trip has just given us a glimpse of all that is on offer in Outback Qld. We have learnt so much, and have a way better appreciate of the struggles that our farmers are experiencing. It is really sad that we are a loosing such an historical part of our Country's life. But in all honestly I can understand why we are loosing them. It is a very tough life without a lot of rewards, but it is tragic for us as a country....
We have another pretty long day on the road today, as there are quite a few towns along the way for us to explore before we get to Roma. There is also a lot to see in Roma and so we were keen to get an early start....
We got away a little after 8.30am and headed into town to the Bakery again, Steve wanted some more bread and some more of those lovely apple slices that he had bought yesterday, so that we could have them for morning tea when we stopped at Mitchell.
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| Contrast in the different highways. |
The drive out of Charleville, was pretty enough although we started to see some road kill again, this time not all, Kangaroos, but a couple of wild pigs and a goat. There were however a lot more trees and vegetation along this stretch of the highway.
Our vist stop was Morven, just a little under 100kms from Charleville, it is very small but we did notice a sign for the Old Tin Kerosene House, so thought it was worthwhile having a stop and checking it out.
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| Welcome to Morven |
We had heard good reports about Morven from friends of ours who had actually free camped here for a couple of days. It also is well set up for the tourist also. It was quite a pretty little town, although old.
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| Typical home in Morven. |
We saw this sign on the side of the road and thought it was worth checking out.
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| Unique Kerosene tin slab hut |
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| Kathy in front of it. |
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| A little about it |
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| side view |
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| side and back... |
Even the roof was made out of compressed kerosene tins. It really was quite interesting.
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| This was the size of the building for their historical museum |
I am taking it that mostly their historical museum consisted mainly of the Kerosene Hut and a few pieces of old machinery out in their grounds. Still it was worth the stop and the little walk around.
We had parked across the road from this lovely park. It was lovely and green and had lots of lovely trees and gardens in it. Quite a contrast to everything else around it.
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| Morven Bush Park |
This mural on the Public Toilet wall though did amuse me. Obviously goats feature out here, as we also saw a dead goat on the side of the highway. It looked to be a wild one through.
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| The Morven Goat Races. |
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| There were so lovely old houses and buildings in Morven too |
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| Loved this big bright sign we saw on the side of the road... |
This sign was a lot different to most signs on the side of the highway. It was very old, and made of either chamferboard wood or some sort of timber. We thought it was quite fitting to advertise a product like Bushell's tea which is also a very old tea. Loved it's brightness.
We left Morven and continued down the highway towards our next stop which was Mitchell. We saw quite a few of these on the highway today. I can only imagine how busy this highway would be at night with the big trucks. My brother-in-law does this big haul with three trailers at least two to three times each week. It is a big drive.
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| Large Road trains |
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| A pretty drive and I started noticing the clouds again today. |
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| A bit crazy I know but loved the whiteness and fluffiness against the brilliant blue sky. |
We started noticing a lot of wild flowers on the side of the road again. So pretty, we don't see this on the main highway along the coast.
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| Wild flowers along the side of the highway |
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| fields of purple flowers |
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| carpets of violet... |
Once again we noticed the road kill
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| Looks like a wild dead goat. |
It was such a pretty drive and we enjoyed our time together just being thankful for this wonderful country that we live in. We are so blessed.
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| Wide open spaces |
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| Another one of those long road trains that we saw today |
More beautiful carpeted flowers along the highway.
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| This time it was a carpet of yellow wild flowers. |
Coming into Mitchell
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| Welcome to Mitchell. |
Mitchell surprised us. It was definitely bigger than we had imagined, and it did boast a lovely park, and some beautiful old buildings and a historical courthouse.
Mostly these lovely old buildings are either pubs or churches. I hope that we never loose them, they are part of our heritage
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| Lots of lovely old pubs in these country towns. |
I am amazed at the number of hotels there are in some of these small country towns. These three are all within a couple of blocks of each other...
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| One of the old hotels |
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| Front on and side on. |
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| Lovely wide verandas are a feature of these old buildings |
Since it was closer to lunch time we decided to find a park and have some lunch whilst we were there.
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| The park in Mitchell |
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| It was actually a really nice park.. |
There was a kids birthday party happening whilst we were there. The kids were having so much fun. Kathy and I went looking for a toilet and found the historical courthouse...
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| Kenniff Courthouse in Mitchell |
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| The walkway at the Kenniff Courthouse in Mitchell |
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| Lovely walkways with mosaic inserts |
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| Lovely area around the Kenniff Courthouse |
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| Lovely flowering vines over the walkway at the Kenniff Courthouse. |
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| Just a lovely area. |
Not sure what these are but they almost like like candle holders up and down the street. They all seem to have mosaic insert in each of them.
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These were all up and down the footpath...
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The paths around the courthouse had lots of mosaics tiles depicting the history of the region. They weren't as good as the ones in Emerald, but it was still interesting to read them and check them out.
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| We noticed quite a few boah or bottle trees in Mitchell too. |
We left Michell for the final leg of our journey today to Roma. The roads were good and it was a good comfortable drive.
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| Lovely countryside.... very pretty, love seeing ranges in the background. |
The next little town we passed through was this little place.
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| This place consisted of about half a dozen homes... |
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| Some were pretty run down... |
It was a beautiful day.... we have had some wonderful days these holidays. I have really really enjoyed the beautiful blue skies and I have loved seeing all the different clouds across the skies. There is something really magical about clouds.
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| Loving these rolling clouds... |
Lots and lots of long trucks on this road... I am sure the roads out west are mainly used by grey nomads towing caravans and super road trains. It seems to be the bulk of the vehicles we saw on the roads.
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| Road trains coming |
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| and road trains passing us... |
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| Starting to see a lot of crops growing around here... |
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| and large catcus plants... |
The closer we got to Roma we started seeing sheep in paddocks too.
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| Sheep in lush green pastures |
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| bordered by lovely wild flowers... |
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| Silo's full of grain.. |
We arrived in Roma just after 2pm, and booked into the Big Rig Caravan Park. It was another Top Tourist Park, very nice and situated within walking distance to the Big Rig Tourist attraction.
We quickly booked into the caravan park and set up and then took off for a drive around town to check out the sights of Roma. We really didn't have much time here as we were leaving again first thing in the morning. Roma has lots of things to see, and all of them very good. In fact we were pretty impressed with Roma and it is another place in which we could have spent a few more days.
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| Welcome to Roma |
Roma was a lot bigger than I thought, it was quite a large town with lots to offer. Much bigger than any of the towns since we had left Rocky... It even had places like Maccas.. and fast food take away stores. We hadn't seen any of them either since we left home.
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| Main CBD in Roma |
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| Another one of those impressive buildings we are used to seeing out west. |
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| These trees line a lot of the streets in Roma |
This was to be our destination for the night....
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| Our overnight van park... |
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| Camp Kitchen area... |
Our caravan park was situated right next to this tourist attraction
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| Walking distance from our van park... We visited the Night Show.... |
We got away as quickly as we could from the caravan park as we had a list of things and places we wanted to see before sun down. We checked with the caravan park to find out about the Big Rig Night Show. It started at 7.30pm so we were told to be there at least 15 minutes early, so this meant we only had a couple of hours to look around before we needed to be back, cook and eat dinner and be at the show just after 7pm, especially if we were going to walk there.
Our first port of call on our tourist crawl around Roma was Roma's largest Bottle Tree. It was situated at the end of Edwardes Street. It has a girth of an incredible 8.9 metres.
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| Roma's largest Bottle Tree | |
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| It was enormous. Steve standing next to it gives you some perspective of it's size. |
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| Ian and Steve have a tree hug.... |
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| Steve and I in front of the largest bottle tree |
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| Steve and I in front of the Largest Bottle Tree in Roma... |
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| Ian and Kathy in front of the largest Bottle Tree |
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| give you some idea of how huge this tree really is. |
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| A line of bottle trees... |
From here we headed into town to check out the Avenue of Heroes. This is a street where bottle trees have been planted in honor of all of those who went to war and lost their lives for us..It features over 100 trees. It is a really touching tribute to the soldiers from the Roma district who went to war and lost their lives in the first World War. The planting began in 1918 which each tree now displaying it's own remembrance plaque
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| Avenue of Heroes.... |
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| Each tree has it's own plaque... |
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I had read about the wonderful stained glass windows of the St Pauls so that is where we headed next. The boys were keen to start in the car but Cathy and I wanted over to the church to get some photos. It certainly paid off for us because the although the church would normally have been closed, one of their members was there preparing for the service the next day and let Kathy and I in to have a look and take some photos.
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| St. Paul's Anglican Church - Roma |
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| St. Paul's Anglican Church - Roma |
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| St. Paul's Anglican Church - Roma |
The stain glassed windows inside were beautiful and very vibrant...
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| Inside St. Paul's |
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| Lovely timber work.... such a beautiful old church.. |
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| Looking towards the back of the church where the pipe organ is. |
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| Their lovely stained glass windows and pipe organ.. |
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| Some of their beautiful stained glass windows. |
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| Some of the magnificent stained glass windows in St. Paul's |
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| Vibrant colours... |
Lovely fresh flowers inside the church possibly ready for services the following day.
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| Someone is talented... |
Whilst Kathy and I looked around the boys remained in the car, however they parked outside of this impressive building... It so reminded me of the school that I work in back home... I was later to find out that it indeed was a school....
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| So reminds me of the school I work in back home... |
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| Thought it was interesting that this was one of the doors to the building... |
I found this quite amusing, as I am sure that quite a few of the kids I work with these days will probably need to frequent a place like this down the track. Don't get me wrong, we have some really awesome kids, but quite a few challenging ones as well. I just found it amusing that this was connected to what once was a school.
From here we decided to go and see if we could find the 3D clay mural that was housed at the Cultural Centre. We had an address, so took off to find it. The cultural centre had lots of lovely native flowing gardens around it and the war memorial.
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| Lovely vibrant colours |
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| Alive with colour |
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| Roma War Memorial |
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| The 3D Clay Model we went in search of |
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| Housed at the Roma Town Council |
From here we were off to find the Roma Court House. It has quite a history..
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| Roma Court House |
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| The Court in which Captain Starlight was tried... |
On the 10th
February 1873, Harry Redford (alias Captain Starlight), cattle duffer par
excellence, trail blazer, and folk hero, was tried and acquitted by a Roma jury
of the theft of about 1,000 head of cattle including a famous white bull from “Bowen
Down” Station near Aramac.
Judge
Blakeney’s comment, “I thank God that the verdict is yours gentlemen and not
mine” prefaced the suspension of the criminal jurisdiction of the Western
District Court at Roma for two years (published in the Government Gazette,
dated 5 April, 1873.
We had seen a pretty big windmill when we drove into town earlier in the afternoon so decided to see if we could find it, as it appeared to be pretty close by.
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| It was really quite a large windmill... |
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| The big Roma Windmill |
Across the road from where we found the windmill, we found this little treasure....
I haven't seen one of these for years, but I have had lots of wonderful holidays in one of these Chesney Caravans. They were quite a prestige caravan in their day....
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| The good old Chesney Caravan found in Roma... |
It was close to dusk but we wanted to check out eh Historical Lenroy Slab Hut. This was situated in from of the Big Rig Tourist Attraction which was just around the corner from our Caravn Park. It was to be a pretty quick visit as we had plans to attend the "Big Rig Night Show" and that meant we had to race home, and have dinner first and then be back there again by 7pm for the "Big Rig Night
Show"
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| A visit to the Historical Lenroy Slab Hut |
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| What a life..... |
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| Love this photo of Steve and Ian.... |
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| The Historical Lenroy Slab Hut.... |
This hut is just across the car park from the Big Rig Tourist Display, so we had a bit of a look around before heading home for dinner. it was good too, that we had been out here because it meant we knew where we needed to be when we came back at 7pm.
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| The Big Rig.... |
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| The Driller at the Big Rig..... |
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| A little about the "Driller" |
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| Up close and Personal with the Big Driller |
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| We were heading back to see this after dinner... |
We flew home, as we really only had an hour before we had to be back again and we still needed to have showers and cook our dinner...
We decided to walk back to the show that night. It was a five minute walk from the Caravan Park and it was a nice walk.... We didn't expect the show to be much as it only had a $10 admission charge and even then we managed to get a seniors discount...
The show was actually quite good with lots of video's and information about drilling for gas around Roma...
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| Big Rig Night Show... |
We really enjoyed our stay in Roma... this is another town that we could have spent a few days in as there seemed to be plenty to do and see around Roma...
Highlights today..... How do you determine that when so much of the day was wonderful...
1. Seeing the Kerosene Hut..
2. Carpets of wildflowers along the sides of the road....
3. Wonderful white puffy and fluffy clouds.
4, Mountain ranges appearing again..
5. Exploring...
6. Great company...
7. The night show at the Big Rig... we were pleasantly surprised...
Another big day tomorrow as we make an early start to head off on the next leg of our journey...
