shapeofthings | Roma and Goondiwindi (Reply)

So a few weeks ago now I went to Roma for a couple of days work. Roma, six hours west of Brisbane (being generous with the speed limit) and on the western edge of the Murray-Darling basin. It was my first time that far west, the previous farthest being Goondiwindi, where I went for a two-day workshop last year. Gundi surprised me: it was not the blow-through town I expected. Roma, however, was pretty much spot on.

a veritable field of (noxious) Mexican poppy, Maranoa River

Not that it's a bad thing, really, to be a sleepy little country town clinging on at the edge of the dust. Dependent on bore water, with a bowls club, a decent Chinese restaurant (highly unusual so far out) and a good bakery, she's all wide, flat streets and boab trees, a tiny green oasis. I knew it was going to be dry out there and oh it was. We didn't have the highest strike rate with finding water.

Weir pool, Balonne River

I like to go west now: the sky full of birds by day, and milky with stars at night. Wandering mobs of emus picking clean the struggling crops, competing with flock upon flock of galahs and sulphur-crested cockatoos. Grey kangaroos and wallabies grazing by the roadside on dusk (and far too many road-killed by the careless). No time, however, to pull out the camera and watch when there's work to be done. Only time for a few shots once each site is done. That was Roma.

Goondiwindi's a town on the move, her girth expanding with new estates of brick veneer topped comically by evaporative coolers. In Gundi we sat in another blank meeting room and spoke of things technical. At the end of this incarceration, back at the hotel, the local creek called for exploration. It sang to me with a chorus of frogs and a rowdy audience of galahs. My curiosity rewarded by a pretty pair of turquoise parrots - a new species to my eastern eyes.