We made sure we were in Roma on a Tuesday, as so much seems to happen then. We arrived middayish Monday, after a short stop in Injune to break the trip. We walked around their Waterhole, spotting a few birds and being amazed at the thickness of the duck weed on the water’s surface.
Roma is a town that is trying to reinvent itself as a destination. It has pulled out a lot of stops to give visitors events to see, places to go and activities to do. We had been recommended to stay at the Gun Club – we ended up all alone on the ‘pistol’ range, which was fabulous as the main campground was chockers and packed in like sardines. We managed to do most of the suggested ‘must-do’ items. We visited the outdoor Sculptures Out Back with its clever recycled materials artworks, enjoyed the evening Big Rig Show that explained the history of (unsuccessful) oil and gas exploration (sampling a pleasant glass of port while watching and liking the stray cat photobombing the show), bottle tree spotting (a very big one, many street examples and a memorial avenue to WWI servicemen), sampling and buying gins at the western-most distillery in Queensland (yummy, thanks Western Queensland Distillery), strolling thorugh various parklands but the biggest drawcard was the Roma Saleyard – the largest cattle saleyard in the southern hemisphere.
We were up early on the Tuesday morning to make sure we were at the yards by 8am. We had visited the interpretive centre the day before to understand the processes and watched cattle trucks arrive to deliver their loads (the cattle need to be at the yards by 8pm the night before so they are on a feed curfew, to not add to their weight). Over 10,000 cattle were sold on the Tuesday, and we were spellbound as we watched the operation – moving the cattle, listening to the auctioneers (not understanding a word they said), seeing the lots being weighed and the sale price calculated, and marvelling at how smooth and slick it all was.
We headed west towards Charleville. We stopped at Mitchell and enjoyed their wonderfully warm artesian-bore baths. Very randomly, we were there on a day that free aqua movement classes are held, so we had the double benefit of exercise and relaxation. This was another artesian experience (Burketown, Julia Creek, Winton, Lara Wetlands to list) and one of the few were we actually got wet.
Charleville (Charl-a-ville) is a delightful town that has worked out how to get the most out of its seasonal visitors. The Visitor Information Centre at the lovely Art Deco railway station (terminus of the Westlander service) is phenomenally adapt at pressure selling and booking you on tours and activities. All the operators are on the one system and before we knew it, we had booked an evening cemetery tour, a WWII tag-along tour, a WWII Secret Bunker tour, a Sungazing experience and a date farm visit! And that was before we had got to our campground.
The town has lovely wide streets, a decorated water tower, an array of interesting shops on a functioning high street (as opposed to the empty windows in many country-town business centres), the very grand Corones Hotel taking up almost an entire town block and a lovely riverbank walk (Warrego River). And our campground, just to the south of town, had terrific dark skies, perfect for star gazing and enough space for cooking over our firepit. There is a real sense of community in Charleville as each tourist operator name checked other attraction in the town. We had a fabulous time in a town we knew nothing about until we visited.
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