On our way to Roma we stopped at Surat to see the Cobb & Co Museum. The former changing station for the Cobb & Co company is filled with memorabilia of times when travel in the horse drawn coaches was both, an expensive luxury and a very uncomfortable, rocky ride. 
Stations were placed every 25km apart- a long way on the dry dirt roads while sitting on a wooden bench! Each station had a so called “groom" who would groom, feed and water the 8-10 drawing horses and exchange those which were too exhausted to carry on with one of the reserve animals he kept. 
Settlers excitedly looked out for the lights of arriving coaches. (See the poem by Henry Lawson “The lights of Cobb & Co”.) The coachman not only delivered mail, but also amusing stories, news and gossip.
After grooming our " Beast” and feeding it with diesel, we were on our way to Roma. I falsely believed the town got its name from Italian settlers, but in fact it was named after the Italian wife of a governor.
This unassuming town is the cradle of Australias oil and gas industry, a very rocky cradle at that, as it took 7 decades of drilling and failures to hit success or “pay dirt”. “The Big Rig”, one of the towns main attractions, explains all about this history in a nightly light show documentation, well worth a visit.
What makes this town special for me are the amazing 800 or so bottle trees.
Near Bungil Creek is Roma’s biggest bottle tree which does invite tree-huggers!
Impressive is the “Avenue of Heroes” which reminded us a little of our “Soldiers Avenue” in Freshwater. In front of each of the bottle trees lining the avenue is a dedication to a specific fallen soldier. Each Primary school class adopts a tree and learns all about the soldier. On ANZAC Day the children walk along the avenue and lay wreaths at their trees.
Apart from cold seam gas and oil, “cattle" is the word here in Roma, and tomorrow morning Austin and I will go to Australias largest cattle selling centre, the Roma Saleyards. After enthusiastically insisting, that I wanted to go there, I had second thoughts, thinking of “who the buyers would be”!? Although I am not a vegan the idea of the poor beasts being selected by the Akubra wearing Grim Reapers, made me shudder. Luckily I saw, that tomorrow is a "store sale", where cattle is selected for breeding purposes and fattening up. So I can deceive myself, that its not that bad…..
Sunrise at Roma this morning.