Roadtrip July 2021: Day 13 – Roma

Today’s post is brought to you by Benjamin Franklin without whom – with his kite flying in an electrical storm – we would likely have been unable to run our little electric heater this morning to stay warm.

I mentioned yesterday that the forecast for this morning was -4 degrees, and fortunately it only reached a teeth chattering -3 degrees … but felt like -5.4. With the heater on early (7.00am … OK not exactly early, but early for us) we hid under the covers for another 30 minutes or so until it was safe to face the day.

I don’t believe that it ever actually reached the dizzying heights of 18 degrees from 2.00pm to 4.00pm. From memory, it barely got above 10 degrees all day.

I’m feeling a little rattled today. After a night in Morven staying at Gidgee’s Bush Camp, where we had no power hookup but could have been a million miles from the rest of the world, last night we stayed in Roma at the Villa Caravan Park, which has power hookup and is “conveniently located on the Carnarvon Hwy” – code for “it feels like trucks coming from the north will rumble through your van all night long“.

And rumble they did.

OK, so the top picture above doesn’t make it look so bad, but when you see it from the street side (photo above) you can see that we are almost on the footpath!

The young lady who runs the park said that they would be all quiet by 7.00pm, but clearly the truckies didn’t get that memo. They were still rumbling past at about 10.30 or so when I gave up, jammed some earplugs into my head, and drifted off to the land of nod.

We are here again tonight, and I am a firm believer that – unlike the stock exchange – past performance WILL be an indication of future performance … so I’ll start with the earplugs as soon as I am ready for sleep.

Today was one of those lazy days pottering around Roma and seeing the sights.

Other than a quick pass through Roma on our Brisbane > Charleville > Longreach > Winton > Barcaldine > Rockhampton > Brisbane adventure with Holly (our old van) in 2020, it’s been >20 years since I spent any time in Roma, and that’s when I was working for Telstra. So I needed to get my bearings.

We started at the far end of town – in the east – with the plan of driving all the way through town until we were on the outgoing road back to Mitchell in the west.

Yes I appreciate that doesn’t sound like a particularly startling goal or achievement, but I find that if I set the bar pretty low then I won’t be disappointed early in the day.

So we drove to the eastern side of town, did a U-turn and came back through, albeit making several stops on the way.

First stop was an outback sculpture display on the edge of town. Many of the items were for sale, ranging from $3,000 for a very touching tribute to the fallen soldiers, up to an eye-popping $28,000 for a piece of wood with some holes cut into it.

Clearly I don’t understand art, but some of them were very well done.

From there we went into the Roma Big Rig to have a look around and book our (concession) tickets to tonight’s show, saving ourselves $5 each off the normal price.

The best part of that transaction was saving a total of $10 in entry fees. The most concerning part was that the lady serving us didn’t need to see our Senior’s cards because “she could see that we qualified for the concession”.

I’m not quite sure what that means or how to interpret it, but it appears that the money I save on hair colouring also saves me more money on admissions in the west. Probably lucky that I’m not bald, because she would have thought I was a 25 year old 🙂

We went and had a look at the Roma Bush Gardens, and discovered that the advertising brochure must have captured the gardens in much happier (= greener) times. They were very dry and looking a little forlorn.

I probably should point out that while Roma is still a well-sized township (population ~7,000), nothing is ever very far away. In fact, you could probably throw a rock from one side of the main street to the other, so when I say we “went to the gardens” or “went into town”, it’s not a particularly onerous journey … maybe a 2 minute drive.

So anyway, we went back into town (500m, if that), had coffee and then parked Elsie and went walking up and down the main street to see if there was anything that we missed from yesterday’s walk.

It was just a nice, pleasant morning, walking around town in the sunshine, looking in the shops, and feeling a bit like the Michelin Man.

Here’s a fun fact – that glass turret at the top of the School of Arts Hotel (picture above) was used as a lookout location during the war.

I’m unsure how PC (politically correct) they like to be out here in the west, but calling a shop “Mensland” just sounds to me like they are asking for trouble!

Back to the van for some lunch, and MBW read her book for a while, and I had a little nap. I didn’t get the chance to let off as many Z’s as I would have liked last night, for fear that I was going to be run over by a truck.

This afternoon we took Elsie out for a short drive to the local fuel station to give her a big drink, and it was good to see that the price of diesel is back to an acceptable $1.41/litre. I also gave her windscreen a good wash, because it had a significant build-up of bug DNA again.

Both Elsie and Ernie are going to need a very good bath when we get home, as they are both starting to look very dusty and dirty. I’ve noticed that since we have been driving on these outback roads, we no longer get asked if the van is new 🙁

While I was filling up, another vehicle pulled in beside me and it had “Equine Dentist” written on the door. Equine dentist … that’s two words that you don’t normally expect to see together … I suppose it means what I think it means?

Tonight we went to the night show at the Roma Big Rig. The Big Rig is a display depicting Roma’s history in the oil and gas fields, and it was a good night. The show only went for about an hour, but it was very informative and it was interesting to see photos from the 1920s and learn about how the drilling occurred.

As part of the show, everyone gets a shot of St George Port and a take-home shot glass. We are not alcohol drinkers, but one of our sons told us that St George makes really good port, and that we should try it if we get a chance.

So when our tour guide said “does anyone prefer a shot of juice instead of port?”, we stayed silent.

When in Roma, do as the Romans do … I guess.

Ciao