Not Before Time

When NSW and Queensland had the dust storms last July or August, we had them through Roma as well – it took me 4 hours to clean the van after it had gone through .

Because we walked everywhere in Roma, the truck was sitting for a while, so we took it for a drive to St George, just under 200km south of Roma. The weather wasn’t the best – humid and overcast, although the sun did come out every now and then. And since St George advertises itself as the Inland Queensland Fishing Capital we also put the fishing rods in just in case . St George is a nice little town on the Balonne River about 500km west of Brisbane. There’s not a lot there, a couple of pubs, a few shops and cafes, but it’s really pretty. There’s a lovely riverside walk lined with river gums, birds and a good walking path, as well as a couple of nice little parks which are good to sit and have a picnic, or just to relax. The visitor information centre is across the road from the main part of the walk and has information on the history of the town and the cotton growing which is quite interesting.

We went to Beardmore Dam as it’s supposed to be pretty good for fishing, but they weren’t biting the day we were there. Like a lot of dams in Queensland, the water was fairly low, so I’m not sure if that had something to do with it or not. It would be good to see it now after all the rain that Queensland has had.

Ben and Kat and their new ‘baby’ Maisie came up to visit us in Roma over the Melbourne Cup weekend . It was really great seeing them and meeting one of our new grand dogs (Matthew and Melissa also have a new puppy – a German shepherd called Coco). Maisie’s a Pyrenees mountain dog and absolutely gorgeous. She’s going to be huge I think, and she’s very friendly and cuddly. Except for her colouring, she looks a lot like our dog Gypsy looked, and has a very similar temperament.

Matthew and Melissa also have a new puppy, Coco, a Germany Shepherd puppy. She’s also very smart – took out a blue ribbon at her first puppy training session! Clever girl

Well, we’ve left Roma after 7 months there. I know I’ve been really bad at updating this site, but in my defense we really haven’t done that much worth blogging about. We’ve mainly been working and socializing with our park neighbours. However, for various reasons, we decided to head back over to the coast, so we’ve both finished up at work and we’re now over near Gympie. While here, we’ll be getting some work done on the van’s suspension. And we’re also going to catch up with Graeme and Marie, friends from Melbourne who are visiting their daughter in Noosa, which will be great.

While we were in Roma David worked at Home Hardware and I worked at a café/bookshop called Chapters. We both really enjoyed our jobs and had fun working at them. I worked in both the café and the bookshop, areas that I hadn’t worked in before, and while I enjoyed the café side of it, I really loved the bookshop work.

The managers of the park we stayed in (The Big Rig Tourist Park) are great and we really enjoyed meeting them and their sons Josh and Luke. We ended up spending Christmas day with them and the other park residents who were here. Started out with pancakes for breakfast, Christmas lunch, and then all the leftovers for dinner. It was a really lovely day.

New Year Eve was very quiet – not a thing went on in the area where we were. David went to bed early, but I managed to stay up and see 2010 in, but not by much