Brisbane Region to Roma
Heading Out
Anyone who has done a family road trip will know that the morning of departure is chaotic! Despite weeks of planning and gradual packing, the final morning always involves the careful stacking of suitcases, food, activities and other paraphernalia into the vehicle, often around the children. I like to leave the house neat, tidy and clean so that it feels welcoming when we arrive home, but this means that there’s an extra element of cleaning each space behind us as we leave each room to pack the car. For these reasons, we decided not to be too ambitious when starting out on our Outback Queensland road trip, opting to set out from our house mid-morning, with the goal of arriving in the town of Dalby for morning tea.
After posing for some happy snaps with our friends, we all set off on the two-hour drive to Dalby. For anyone familiar with the south-east Queensland region, there’s a new toll road that bypasses Toowoomba now (the Toowoomba Bypass on the A2/Warrego Highway), so we were able to avoid the Toowoomba city traffic and make our way over the Toowoomba range without slowing down too much.
Morning Tea: Dalby
Our first stop was for morning tea in Dalby, Queensland. Dalby was settled in the 1840s and it seems to have retained many of its beautiful old buildings. It has the feel of a town that had wealth, because the streets are wide and grand, and the older buildings around the town are imposing and quite intricately detailed. We did find it funny that the town appeared (seemingly) out of nowhere. One minute we were driving down the Warrego Highway between fields of high crops and then, suddenly, on one side of the street, farmland gave way to a large hardware store and fast-food chains. The other side of the street remained farmland for a little longer, so we had the bizarre experience of being right between urban and rural views, depending on which side of the car you were on.
Based on recommendations from friends and family, we stopped for morning tea at the Urban Paddock Café (aptly named, considering our experience driving into town). This café offers plenty of outdoor dining space, cute little stores and a playground area for kids. It was clearly very popular, with just a few tables free when we arrived. Given that we were travelling during the ongoing pandemic, we were careful about keeping our distance. We hadn’t planned on staying too long. We had snacks with us in the cars, so we grabbed coffees, let the kids have a quick play, and kept moving. There was a park one block away that had clean public toilets, so we made a quick pit stop there before hitting the road again.
Sightseeing: Chinchilla
Our next stop was the Big Melon at Chinchilla. It’s really just a photo opportunity, but the kids certainly weren’t complaining about the chance to get out and stretch their legs at this giant piece of fruit – all four tonnes of it, stretching three metres high and nine metres wide. Worth a quick stop.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a great recommendation for lunch from our first day of travel. We naively believed that there’d be something good ‘just ahead’ and kept that hope alive for quite a while, but ended up stopping at a roadhouse for some hotbox food (hot chips) and flavoured milk to keep us going. The driving leg from Dalby to Roma was just over three hours, so not too long, but we were all keen for a bite to eat because our stop in Dalby had been fairly brief and breakfast had been early. We celebrated the first meal of our two-family road trip by standing behind our vehicles, eating snacks from our packed food (as well as the hot chips) and kicking ourselves for not stopping somewhere nicer, sooner.
Accommodation: Roma
We pulled into Roma around 4 pm and easily found our accommodation at Roma Central Motel. I highly, highly recommend this motel for families. The hosts, Helen and Charlie, contacted us while we were on the road to confirm our arrival time and provide updates about checking in. We found the rooms to be clean and spacious, with great amenities. Both our families booked family rooms, but the hosts went the extra mile for our family, taking out some of the furniture from the room to safely accommodate an extra bed. We were extremely impressed and grateful.
(Side note: The hosts were genuinely very accommodating. We had planned an early getaway, so had arranged key drop on the Sunday morning. After we had packed our car and locked our room, we discovered that we had locked our car keys in our room before pulling the door closed (or so we thought). One of the hosts, Charlie, cheerfully got up and came and unlocked the room for us, before we sheepishly discovered that the keys were already in our vehicle (just not in any of the places we had searched in the previous, frantic, fifteen minutes of pulling our car apart!). Charlie just chuckled and wished us all the best, despite us having ruined his Sunday morning sleep-in. At this stage, we were less than 24 hours into our holiday and our travel buddy friends had already suffered our first day lunch fail and had helped us pull our car apart in our search for the keys – I wonder whether they were second-guessing their choice to travel with us, ha ha!)
Back to our arrival in Roma. We were all keen for a rest and something to eat, so FunDad did a quick trip through the McDonald’s drive-thru and we had afternoon tea in our rooms. Roma’s McDonald’s is the last one heading west in Queensland, something we didn’t realise until we started looking for quick food options later in the trip and realised that fast food hadn’t made its way to the true Outback (probably a good thing).
Dinner
We didn’t have dinner reservations in Roma, but made some during the afternoon – we had to make sure our lunch experience was not repeated! The motel hosts recommended The White Bull Tavern and we found it to be great. Generous portion sizes (see my plate-sized chicken parmigiana in the photo below), kid-friendly dining options and a family-friendly atmosphere. We were given a large table despite making our reservations quite late. Our table was covered with paper and the children were given crayons so they could entertain themselves with drawing while waiting for their food. Everyone was excited to be on this adventure and it was a great way to end our first day of travel.
Day 1 Outback Queensland Family Road Trip Summary
Start:
Brisbane region
End:
Roma
Driving:
5 hours (440 km)
Accommodation:
Roma Central Motel
Notable stops:
Urban Paddock Café, Dalby;
Big Melon, Chinchilla;
The White Bull Tavern, Roma.
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