We drove down from the Bunya Mountains and stopped in Roma, a few hours west, to plan the next few weeks.
Fortunately it wasn't as cold last night as it was the night before, so we slept much better. We were on the road by 8:30, and headed down towards Dalby. It looked like a short distance on the map, but it took the better part of 90 minutes, even with the road being paved all the way. Sigh. The one good map we have of the area--"Queensland's Outback" by HEMA--is of a scale that you could fit all of Texas on it, with Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas too.
Then we drove west. The flat farmland near Dalby, reminiscent of the Sacramento Valley, gave way to rolling eucalypt woodlands east of Miles. After another 2 1/2 hours driving, we were in Roma. Here we had a few things to do. We stopped by the ranger's office and got handouts for most of the parks that we read about in a folder at the Bunya Mountains National Park information hut. We withdrew some more money, and verified that our latest chunk of money from the US was wired in correctly... didn't get such a good exchange rate this time, something around 55.50US for each Aussie dollar.
And we moved our diving course out three days, so we start on Sunday not Thursday. We'd been planning the night before, and figured that there's no way to rush through these parks in west-central Queensland without driving 12 hours a day. We'd like to see a few sections of Carnarvon, Blackdown Tableland, and the Mt Etna Caves near Rockhampton. It makes an easy big loop circuit, but there's no real way to do it in four days from the Bunyas and still end up in Airlie Beach on Wednesday. So we're glad that we're able to move it.
We
then poked around Roma... there's not much to do. I enjoyed seeing the
avenues of bottle trees. The town had planted 94 of them for each of the
94 residents killed in World War I; now they're huge squat trees, not 5 meters
high, but with bases that are 3 or 4 meters around. A picture really shows
how they look... and shows the annoying 'rear-end to the curb 45 degree angle
parking' that many country towns in Australia use. For me, it's
drive-by-Braille.
Later, we stopped by the Romavilla Winery, operating since 1863, where they make quite a few wines. I sampled more than I should and didn't buy anything, much to Chris' embarrassment. They were just kinda flabby (the shiraz), too sweet (the ports), or just too watered down (the madeira).
Chris then napped while I walked around the hotel and picked up seed pods from the bottle trees (Brachychiton rupestris). I grabbed a few, but also noticed quite a few curious beetles on them too, so I have to be careful and isolate the seeds. Took some pictures of the beetles, too, and collected some. Maybe I'll send them to Neville in Auckland if he's interested.
At dark, we went to the fancy-shmancy "Big Rig" spectacle, a nighttime slide show that the local council built to lure tourists in. Roma is the center of a small oil and gas patch, and the show was mildly interesting, though not really worth the $8.
We then grabbed some pizza, did some grocery shopping at Woolworth's, and went to bed.