Roma's an interesting town, big substantial buildings on the main streets, lovely Queenslander homes on large blocks. Besides being a rural town, it also has gas and oil - in fact they have The Big Rig Centre there which explains all about it but we decided not to visit it - maybe next time. We continued east along the Warrego 'Highway', hardly deserving the name as it is a two laned bumpy road, in need of upgrading. It's qute busy with cars, trucks and road trains. We stopped at Miles for lunch - a pleasant little town, then drove around the next town, Chinchilla - 'the Campdraft Capital of Australia'. Chinchilla was a surprise as it was quite a big town. After looking around Chinchilla, we drove on to Dalby, where we are staying tonight. On ... read more

It's about 400 or so kilometres from Narrabri to Bourke - a long drive to do in a day, in a motor home. The countryside is flat, and between Narrabri and Wee Waa there are cotton farms as far as the eye can see. The cotton has recently been harvested so bare paddocks were edged in large bales of cotton, and the road for kilometres was edged with puffs of cotton. It's something of a controversial crop to have here in mostly water-starved Australia, although we were told today that cotton farmers can't take water from the rivers here unless it's above a certain flood height.. Once we'd left the cotton area, it was mostly wheat, sheep or beef cattle. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife apart from several emus and two foxes ... read more

We always like being in the country where the views are of sweeping plains and far horizons. We had some time in the interesting old town of Gulgong, the town that once graced our $10 note, along with it's famous son, poet Henry Lawson .. before both were replaced with other bards - Banjo Patterson and Dame Mary Gilmore Every June long weekend - which in fact will be next weekend - Gulgong celebrates The Henry Lawson Festival, with a parade down the main street and various Lawson works being performed. Of course, as is our way, we were too early for it all, (always just too early or just too late) although we did see Gulgong's windows dressed for the coming festivities. After discussing beef and wool prices with some of the locals, we then ... read more

We had such a nice stay with sister Barbara. We also visited her daughter Kath and her family who live not too far away. Today we left Canberra and drove to Bungendore. Bungendore is a small town but has some nice shops - our favourite is the wood working shop which contains beautiful art pieces from tables and chairs, chests, etc to small boxes and such in all sorts of beautiful wood. Most are expensive but it's obvious that a lot of love and time has been put into each piece. We didn't stop at the next town, Braidwood, but kept on down the very very steep mountain. Once more my camera was very busy as I photographed the lovely trees and burrawangs underneath, as well as the beautiful farmland we passed. So now we are ... read more

Somehow we resisted the urge in Mansfield to head for a country clothing store, kit ourselves in RM Williams elastic-sided boots, moleskins, shirt and Akubra hat and head for the high country. I can always see myself riding across the mountains on a sure-footed horse, sitting by the campfire reciting poems by Banjo Pattterson at night. Of course, I couldn't stay on a horse or light a fire and only know the first and second verse of some of Banjo's poems so commonsense prevailed and we continued our motor home travelling. Instead I'll aquaint myself with more of the high country life when the country comes to the city for the Easter Show. The countryside from Mansfield is very green, cattle and sheep look healthy, dams and haysheds are full. It was so pleasant being surrounded ... read more