Roma - Charleville

We headed to Roma, about 350 km west of Toowoomba, on Easter Monday. We had originally planned to be there earlier, but due to Roma's Easter festival we hadn't been able to get a booking at the caravan park. This turned out to be a good thing, as Roma experienced torrential rain and floods just before and during Easter, the caravan might have been washed away if we'd been able to stick to our original plans. The highway access only reopened 2 days before our arrival, with the road showing quite a lot of damage. We were concerned that we would find the caravan park was a mudhole, but obviously the water goes away as quickly as it comes up, as the only evidence of the flooding was debris and grass caught against trees, signs and bridge railings. Apart from a few lingering puddles the ground itself was dry.

Roma's main tourist attraction is the Big Rig, a display celebrating the history of oil and gas exploitation in the area. This was initially an accident - in 1900 a crew drilling for water were surprised when the well gushed gas, mud and water. The gas poured out unchecked for 5 years before the local town council decided it could be useful, they built a gasometer and used the gas for street lighting, a marvel that apparently drew visitors from as far away as Brisbane. Unfortunately they were 5 years too late - 10 days after turning on the lights the town went dark again as the gas ran out. Not to be deterred, further wells were sunk looking for gas, the next successful attempt was unfortunately using a steam powered drill - the gas was ignited by the fire in the steam boiler, 'turning night into day' for 45 days, and once again drawing in the sightseers, before they managed to extinguish it. Luckily today's gas industry is a little more professional, and provides a lot of the region's industry, as well as still drawing in visitors like ourselves. We spent half a day checking out the Big Rig exhibitions and displays, and attended the night time sound and light show. We also did the history walk around the sites where the original wells were sunk, some of which still provide the town's water supply today.

Apart from the oil and gas history, we also did the standard history walk around town, a nature walk along the local creek (luckily on a sealed pathway, the creek banks were still very muddy) and visited the 3-D mural at the civic centre, which was very well set up with an audio explanation of the various mural elements.

From Roma we headed nearly 300km further west to Charleville. Although Charleville is officially in 'the outback', the incredibly wet year experienced by all of Queensland means the local landscape is lush and green, with the grass waist high in places. Last year apparently there was no grass at all, just dry red dust. For a small town Charleville has a lot to see, and we ended up spending 3 nights here instead of our intended 2.

The caravan park we stayed at does a good job of 'value adding'. Once a week they offer 'campoven' meals - lamb stew with mash and damper, with apple crumble and custard for dessert. With John's wheat intolerance we usually avoid this sort of thing, but they assured us they could provide a gluten free option. When we found the $20 cost included $5 towards a yabby race we were hooked. The meal was terrific, and the entertainment very outback. Each couple was allocated a yabby (for those not in the know, a yabby is a fresh water crayfish) then some extra yabbies were auctioned off. All the yabbies were put in a round pen in the middle of a sheet, then at the starters gun the pen was lifted and the yabbies set off - well, some of them - most, including ours, just hung around in the middle of the sheet. The owner of the winning yabby collected 50% of the entry fees, the other 50% being donated to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It was great fun, and a great way to meet the other campers.

Charleville's main attraction is the Cosmos Centre, based around star gazing. We spent a couple of hours looking through the displays on the planets, sun and galaxy, and did both the day time and night time telescope viewings. We were on our own for the day telescope viewing - obviously not many people are interested in seeing sun spots and the sun's corona, although we found it fascinating. The stars draw everybody in though, there were at least 30 people for the rather chilly (despite plenty of warning several people still turned up in shorts, they seemed very grateful for the blankets provided) night time telescope viewing, with Saturn and its rings definitely being the highlight.

Another night time Charleville attraction is the Bilby Experience. At $5 per person we didn't expect much, which was probably just as well. It was our volunteer presenter's first night (we suspect the Royal Wedding had taken away the usual volunteers) and she could certainly have done with some knowledegable support. The reason for the Bilby centre is a sanctuary constructed in a national park about 300km south of Charleville (although we were left with the impression from the talk that it was only 15km away), fenced to keep out feral foxes and cats and stocked with captive bred Bilbys. After the 30 minute talk and video we visited the breeding pen, where these nocturnal animals were scampering around. Although interesting, it wasn't nearly as good an experience as we had at Narrogin, when we actually walked amongst the bilbys.

During World War II, the Charleville airport was taken over by the US air force, and became a no-go zone for the locals. It wasn't until after the war that they found that not only was the airport used to launch bombing sorties into the Pacific, it was also a top secret testing station for the Norden Bomb Sight, an invention that enabled pin point aerial bombing. We did a very interesting tour of the remains of the US base, mostly hidden in the bush. You need to exercise some imagination to visualise over 3,500 US servicemen living and working in what is now basically mulga scrub.

Dry years and droughts are nothing new in this part of Australia. In 1902 the government meteorologist imported a set of 'Vortex Guns' in an attempt to break the grip of a devastating drought. The 'guns' emitted a wave of pressure that was meant to trigger the clouds to produce rain. They didn't work, which in the end didn't matter because less than 12 months later the drought broke with, you guessed it, floods. 2 of the 'guns' remain in Charleville, a monument to man's ability to believe anything if he wants it enough.