Being in central Queensland, it seems fitting that today was all about cows. The Roma Saleyards are the biggest cattle saleyards in the southern hemisphere. Tuesday is the main sale day, and they sell around 6000 heads of cattle a day. On a really busy day they auction 12,000. There is a free tour every Tuesday so we went along. The tour was popular – we were divided into three very large groups. It was led by a retired saleyard worker.

The organisation around the sale and what goes on behind the scenes and the industry behind it was so interesting to learn about. The agents, the auctioneers, the farmers, the truckies… Then all the people who supply services to the farmers.

I’ve never seen anything as fast as the auctioneer. He was so fast I couldn’t understand a word, then within seconds of finishing he was on to the next pen.

The sale, purchaser etc must have been recorded by someone but how they keep up I don’t know. You couldn’t day dream or get distracted for a second.

If you go to Roma try and time it for a Tuesday to see it.

We did some grocery shopping in Roma. The main area has some beautiful buildings and old pubs. Lucky they had a reject shop – I have already lost one pair of reading glasses and broke the other so bought a couple of pairs at the reject shop. Suggestion bring more glasses than you think you’ll need if going on a road trip…

Finally we left for Carnarvon Gorge, about a three hour drive. Once we hit the Central Highlands all of a sudden the scenery changed. It was much more up and down and you could see the gorges in the background.

After we turned off the main highway towards Carnarvon Gorge,there were heaps of cows grazing. Some wandered onto the road but wandered off as we got closer. The backdrop was beautiful and I asked Chris to stop for a photo. It’s has been too unsafe to stop for photos until now – but it was a wide, quiet road  so this time we could. I grabbed my camera and ran across the road. 

The cows were wary and some ran away.

But when they realised I wasn’t a threat, they got curious. And suddenly they were all staring at me and there was a quite a lot.

Don’t mean to be dramatic, but it did start to feel a little like The Walking Dead. The zombies are all out there doing their thing, then all of a sudden something catches their attention and they all start wandering over. Except these are cows of course.

It was so beautiful but also so strange. Chris said he wished he had a video of me hot footing it back to the car.

Wish I had stayed a bit longer and got some more photos. I do love taking photos of cows.

Beautiful scenery the last 40km.

We arrived at Breeze Caravan Park just outside the Carnarvon Gorge National Park. They have a bar open 4pm – 6pm.They have really great camp kitchens with a pizza oven, BBQs, toasters, boiling water.

We bought chops at the butcher in Roma today and made lamb pizza with feta and oregano tomatoes. Yum.

Thank you recipetineats.com for inspiring me to be more creative.

We went to the bar to watch the video about the National Park walks. There are a lot of groups here because it’s school holidays.

I said to Chris “Look, there are people sitting by themselves, do you think they want to talk to people. Maybe we can say hello. But what if they don’t want to talk?” Chris said that wouldn’t be advisable. It’s called stalking. Probably good advice but I was thinking if you don’t want to meet people wouldn’t you just drink for free at your van instead of paying at the bar?