I loved my walk around Roma this morning. It looked so lovely in the early morning light. The few locals who were out and about at that hour were really friendly. At first I thought everyone was waving to me, but then I realised they were waving away flies. Yes, the outback salute (waving flies from one's face) is a common sight out here. The flies are small and sticky and everywhere.

We hit the road before 7:30, but perhaps we were a tad too early. The roos were still around, so we had to take care. By the number dead on the road I believe they must have been kemakazi kangaroos. We managed to avoid them, and also quite a few emus.

Yesterday it was Wallumbilla; today we passed through Muckadilla, Wamalilla, Bindango and Mitchell. Then there was ... Angellala, Mungalala, Dulbydilla and Morven. I love this country. In Austria the hills may be alive with the sound of music, but in Australia, the plains are alive with the sound of place names.

The countryside was quite green due to recent rains and looked lovely stretching for miles. The roadworks on this stretch were plentiful and really mucked up Reg's time-keeping calculations. However, we still made good time and hardly had to share the road with many other vehicles.

We thought breakfast at Morven would be a good idea. That was the plan. That is, until we got to Morven and discovered it was a "blink and you miss it" sort of town. It was very tiny, so we decided to skip breakfast and make Charleville our lunch stop.

Reg's mother was born in Charleville, so this town was a must on our list of stops today. Although a little run down, it is a neat, clean town with the wide open streets common to these outback towns. The streets were built so wide in the early days to allow the bullock teams room to turn around.

Lunch ended up being pies and flies - a very poor choice on our part. The pies were too hot and the flies too persistent for us to enjoy the meal. Maybe next time we'll go for the fish and chips and flies instead.

We stayed the night in Augathella at the junction of the Landsborough Highway and the road from Morven. Augathella has a fascinating history of bushrangers, bullockies and sheep stations. It's slogan is "home of the meat ant" and, as well as several wrought iron meat ant sculptures along the main street, there is a gigantic meat ant sculpture in the park.

Also around the town are some colourful murals depicting the history of the town. So ... murals, meat ants and more. We moseyed around the cemetery, checked out the Kenniff tree where the bushranger Kenniff brothers used to tether their horses and delighted in the wonderfulness of this lovely little town.

In the 1800s the Augathella district was taken up for pastoral runs and Reg's grandfather worked at Burenda Station, which was, and still is, quite a major one. The town was originally called Burenda, but was later changed to Ellangowan and then re-named Augathella in 1833.

Reg's mother went to school here in the early 1900s and although the original school is no longer here, we were able to see the present one and enjoyed chatting to the present Principal. A friend of ours also taught here many years ago (How many would that be, Sharon?) and we enjoyed chatting to locals who remembered her. With only about 200 residents in the town, everyone knows everyone and everything.

You really can't but help falling in love with this place. We hit the jackpot making such an excellent choice to spend the night here. We had a very spacious and comfortable cabin in the Palms Motel set amid lush gardens and right next door to the one and only pub that served the most massive and tender, tasty steaks imaginable. All in all, we have had another wonderful day out west.