8 September 2012 - St George Tourist Park, Western Downs, Queensland, Australia

Another clear day greeted us this morning and we were away before 10 am heading south on the Carnarvon Highway.

There was still more to Roma than we had seen. For instance we had missed the livestock sales held on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We had made a point of visiting the sale yards in Gracemere, just out of Rockhampton, last year and would have enjoyed visiting those at Roma, apparently the largest cattle sales centre in Australia with 300,000 to 400,000 cattle passing through the facility annually. The complex covers 123 acres, but we only caught a glimpse of them this morning as we headed out of town.

I had been impressed yesterday to read a newspaper article that draw attention to how huge this area is. There is currently a whole lot of hoo-ha surrounding the imminent sale of Cubbie Station, a large cotton farm situated about one hundred kilometres south west of here to a Chinese company which apparently has the backing of the Chinese government. Senator Barnaby Joyce harks from this area and is making a meal of the publicity about himself and his electorate. The seat of Manaroa, named for one of the significant rivers flowing through it, covers an area of 731,297 square kilometres, 42% of Queensland and an area three times the size of the state of Victoria. I find this all amazing.

The first twenty or so kilometres of today’s route were lined with wild sunflowers, smaller than those painted by Van Gogh but no less pretty. These soon gave way to road kill, victims of the many road trains that make this route their own. As we looked out across these western plains, we could see herds of cattle, open bushlands and evidence of the gas mining, clusters of pipes and valves in fenced compounds. Just as we had seen on our route to Roma, we passed roadside signs pointing into the bush signifying stock routes. We wondered whether these were merely of an historical nature or still in use for droving purposes.

Soon the landscape changed, still flat with open eucalypt land, often extensive areas of cultivated land and cotton fluff still lying beside the road even so long after the harvest months. All this reminded me of the country about Boomi where we were stationed in May last year when Chris was beavering away on the cotton farm and I was playing at keeping house.

Soon after 11 am we arrived at Surat, just seventy eight kilometres south of Roma. Surat was the site of a Cobb & Co Changing Station and the destination of the last run by that very famous horse drawn transport company in 1924. The community has gone out of their way to preserve this history and to make sure their town is worth stopping at. To facilitate such a delay in this charming township of just 500 folk, there is a motel, camping ground and best of all, a free camping area on the north side of the Balonne River. Services are modest; a pharmacy, police station, post office and a general store cum café, and a community centre that houses the library, one of the best little museums I have been to, an art gallery, an aquarium and rooms where health professionals come to offer their services from time to time.

The aquarium was a surprise; there is just the one large tank exhibiting the fish to be found in the river including the famous Murray Cod and Yellowbelly. And just when I was considering how sad it was for these fish to be deprived of the mud and flood cycles of the Balonne, I noted the plaque advising the dimensions and volume of the tank to appease such concerns.

We parked up above the river and had lunch before reluctantly driving on further south. Had we not been set on reaching St George today we may well have stayed, and Chris could have taken his fishing line out of the wrapping and caught a cod for dinner.

We covered the last 117 kilometres before mid-afternoon but were too late for the Information Centre; it shuts on the weekend at 2 pm. But we did have to give the town officials kudos for guiding us to the office via the street alongside the lovely river, again the Balonne. We were also surprised to see the many modern spacious homes as we passed through the outskirts of the town, all built low to the ground in a place so prone to flood.

I did a load of washing and we spread the maps out and plotted our route for the next week or so, and decided to stay a couple of days rather than the one night that we had checked in. Tomorrow we will check out St George; it is going to be yet another fine day.