ROMA

We  left Lightning Ridge in pouring rain and it stayed that way all day. We had intended to stay the night at St George but decided to plough onto Roma. To our amazement we found all three caravan parks were booked out, so we had to set up camp at the Roma showgrounds and we were not the only ones. We still had power and showers and toilets so all was not lost.


Looks like we are at the starting gates!

Roma's claim to fame is it's the first place in Australia where underground natural gas and oil was discovered here early in the 20th century. When they first discovered the gas the towns folk were not sure what to do about it. Five years after the find they decided to connect the town up to the gas. It was connected and the town was aglow. After just ten days the gas ran out! They had wasted all that gas in the previous five years. Eventually they found more and all was not lost.



Monument to Miners

There is an excellent interactive display showing the history of the discovery until to the present day. There is also a sound and light show each evening. They are now searching for and extracting coal seam gas.


The Big Rig

Some of the machinery used in the discovery of the oil and gas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is were they held the sound and light show.

It appears the gremlins have not quite left us alone. Saturday afternoon we discovered we had a slow leak in one of our tyres! It had a nail in it. Having planned on leaving on Sunday we had to delay that as we had to wait until Monday to have the tyre repaired.