Outback Qld Day 1- An early start is a good start. We were away before daybreak and out of the city well before the morning traffic. At the top of the range, Toowoomba was blanketed in a light fog, but the sun soon shone through and we decided to continue on to Dalby for breakfast. I must say that a coffee and a hot cross bun tastes much better on the open road than in the kitchen at home.

Refreshed, we continued west. The Warrego Highway threaded through fields of sorghum, cotton and maize that spread to the horizon. The road was in good condition all the way and, with not much traffic, provided a pleasant, stress-free drive. The many dead kangaroos on the side of the road made us thankful we had not driven this stretch in the early dawn. To avoid any of these creatures bounding into our car bonnet, the plan for the rest of the trip is to avoid early morning and evening travel.

As Reg sat in the passenger seat enjoying making calculations of speed and distance and time and petrol usage, I delighted in the scenery and the passing place names. You have got to love Australian place names. They roll off the tongue and just beg be strung into song. We passed ... Brigalow, Boonarga, Goombi and Goonalah ... Dulacca, Palardo, Pickanjinny and Baking Board. (Okay, so that last one doesn't have much rhythm, but it is a real place.) We went by Cameby, wasted some time in the Wallumbilla pub, but not at the bar in Yuleba, drove for miles to get to Miles, and went too fast past the Cactablastus Hall to get a picture (such a pity because that would have been a real blast).

Wallumbilla was a pleasant stop. It is a not so big, sleepy, country town with wide streets lined with fat, shady bottle trees. I lived just outside here at Chadford where Dad taught in a one teacher school back in the day before I had even started school. We had a beer at the old pub where it appeared that it might have a huge trade in the evenings of itinerant workers. At midday it was just us and a barefoot local lady who purchased a flagon to take away. The bar maid, we guessed, had lived in Wallumbilla all her life. Her parents may have even been first cousins. She was rather stern and not the least bit interested in chatting, which was a pity as we wanted to find out more about the area. Perhaps it was just the stress of the lunch time rush that put her off.

We made Roma by a very respectable hour in the early afternoon and had time to look around (and around and around and around as we searched for the motel we had booked.) We finally found the motel, suitably called "The Bottle Tree" as Roma has, like Wallumbilla, bottle trees everywhere. In fact, one street is lined with bottle trees, each with a plaque dedicated to a soldier fallen in the war.

Roma is the main town of the Western Downs and is the cradle of Australia's oil and gas industry. Australia's first discovery of petroleum was made here in 1900. Being Friday, the locals were celebrating the end if the working week with a drink at the local near our motel. They were a cheery, friendly lot and the bar maids had not lived here all their lives. In fact, threaded through the slow Australian drawl of the outback, there was a range of accents, including the Irish of the twin barmaids. And no, people, we were not seeing double because of how much we had to drink; there really were twin Dublin girls serving behind the bar, though there may have been quads before the night ended.

We finally left the locals and the Dublin girls to keep on doublin', and dined like kings on a picnic we put together of pate and fresh bread. Retirement is an adventure I am loving.