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Roma, Qld

S 26°33'22" E 148°47'07

Sat 19 - Mon 21 Aug 2000


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Saturday 19th
photo of the Historical Village

We spent the morning visiting the Miles Historic Village. It has to be the best presented museum anywhere in country Australia. The contents are much the same as elsewhere but the presentation is quite different from most country museums. The whole place is very well maintained and tidy.

There are many buildings and they plan to add at least one each year. The buildings have been brought in from their original use like the schoolroom or have been purpose built for the museum.

While the collection clearly is bigger than the capacity of the volunteers to renovate, those items which have been worked on are very well done.


photo of the Duffel memorial plaque

There are many interesting things here and some of them are not very obvious. Tucked away under a sundial there is a very touching memorial to some immigrant kids who behaved heroically in circumstances we can hardly imagine.

This all took place at the time when the first George King, my great grandfather, was setting up his buisnesses and properties and and in the same part of the world where he finally settled at Gowrie.

I suspect that Carl Duffel had a far harder time in making his way in the world than did George King. This was clearly true at the outset but I feel it probably continued all his life.

I wonder how George would have made out if his wife had died and left him to raise the family.

His dauaghter-in-law, my grandmother, Emma Letitia, did indeed bring up her family alone when her husband, George the second, died and she chose to return to Sydney rather than stay in Toowoomba.


We went into town to buy the papers and so on forgetting that it was Saturday afternoon and we are in country Queensland.

phooto of Dulacca

On the way to Roma, we found a little town with a name which reminded me of The451's VC so I took this picture. I know the spelling is wrong but with a Queensland accent it could easily be mistaken for Durlacher.

Sunday 20th

I had done some work overnight sort of planning how we are to get to Alice Springs in time for the Rally. I worked out that we had to slow down if we are not to spend time in the Alice before the rally.

We chose to call Sunday a lay day. Jean's ankle is healing but she thinks it best to take it very easy until its strong again so I did some repairs and we listened to music and read the weekend papers

Monday 21st

We needed to buy some hardware and some copies of some wedding photographs so we decided to stay in Roma another night.

The town is really quite lively though the people move incredibly slowly. We got everything done and repaired to the caravan park for a late lunch.


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Created by Robin Chalmers on 18.08.2000 and last revised 21.08.2000