After we said our goodbyes to our Fraiser Island ‘gang’ and boarded our greyhound coach we headed straight for Brisbane. We decided to skip the rest of the Sunshine Coast as we were running out of money and would soon be back on our credit cards, so we knew that we needed to find jobs fast or otherwise we would be back in England before we knew it. We had heard about an employment agency from 2 of the girls in our Fraiser island group. It was called ‘Travellers at Work’. This agency guaranteed to find you work in the outback for a small administration fee, about $70. The girls themselves had found work through this agency so we knew it was a sure thing. Plus we knew that if we wanted to save then we needed to get off of the coast and head inland, as the coast was so expensive. In addition we were looking forward to meeting a different crowd, don’t get me wrong we love being travellers and meeting travellers alike from different countries and cultures; but we had been in Australia for 3 months at this stage and had only actually met a handful of Australians in amongst all of the amazing French, German, Iranian, Irish, Scottish and English people ...
So therefore a day after arriving to Brisbane we found our closest TAW agency, and 20 minutes later had bagged jobs working together in a hotel/pub as barmaids, in a small town 6 hours drive inland from Brisbane (or Brizzy as the Ozzi’s call it)...
Before I continue, I just want to say a brief bit about Australia Zoo or ‘Steve Irwin’s Zoo’ as it is also known. A day before we packed our bags and travelled to the outback Toni and I decided to visit this Zoo as we had heard great reviews about it and also out of respect for the greatly respected ‘crocodile hunter’ Steve Irwin who tragically died a few years back. The day trip to this Zoo was a really good day out, I highly recommend a visit, we were in high spirits all day and Toni even got a bit closer to conquering her fears about snakes as we held a 20ft long Python... It cost us around $70 each which included transport and entry.Our Outback Adventure
So back to Roma... When we arrived in this town it was bigger than expected; Roma has 2 supermarkets, 1 cinema, 1 McDonalds, 1 KFC, 5 pubs in total and a motel. There are also a few clothes shops, and a few other shops like florist, DIY, electrical, Jewellers etc... oh and a video shop, all the essentials I guess. On our first walk around the town (which took no longer than 15mins) Toni and I had noticed that none of the clothes shops were open, and considering it was only 2pm on a Saturday afternoon we deemed this as very odd- being City girls and all that. Following this insight we started to doubt our detour in our travel plans. However we decided to stick it out as we had came to Roma to save money and we knew that considering there was not much to spend our money on, then saving money should be an easy goal, even if we did pull our hair out with boredom in the meantime.
The hotel/pub we were assigned to live and work in for the next 2 months was called The Royal Hotel and it was as grand as the name suggests (well on a small ‘Town like scale’); it is in the middle of town on its own corner. It is a huge pub compared to the dinky dark musky ones in England. The pub itself has a long rounded bar, 2 pool tables and a separate seating area that also turns into a dance floor on Thursday nights when the tables and chairs are removed and the DJ arrives. The Royal also has a separate ‘bistro’ (or restaurant as us less fancy people call them) and a huge function room at the back. Upstairs has many rooms that are rented out on a daily or weekly basis. There are 2 huge balconies on either side of the pub, one of which was constantly sunny so was the perfect area to do a bit of sunbathing on many of the nice days we spent in Roma. There is also a common area with tea / coffee, microwave, Fridge and a TV/DVD player, where us girls spent many a tired night or hangover afternoon watching DVD’s that we rented from the Video store down the road... Okay I know I went on a bit of rant there and sounded like a bit of an estate agent trying to promote The Royal Hotel, but I just want all you lot reading this to get a feel of where Toni and I lived and worked, and had so many good times for 2 months of our travels... In which case I need to describe the main people that made our experience so special...
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| Our Roma Family and live-in Friends |
The owners of the pub had a separate section upstairs that was there living quarters and there granddaughter also resided here; the granddaughter being like our little sister (even at 17 years old), .... These 3 amazing people became our Australian family and we grew very fond and attached to them. They were not only our employer’s and our Australian family but were also our friends and we will always keep in touch and never forget them... In addition to these amazing people, was also our amazing crazy Irish ‘sister’, she was already a part of our adopted family when we arrived as she had been living and working in the Royal for over 7 months and will stay there as long as possible. Many drunken nights did we have with this crazy, fun, Irish lass, and through her we also met a bunch of fun, wonderful friends, that we too spent many a drunken, fun nights with. In addition to this permanent Roma bunch was the 2 other backpackers that arrived at The Royal 2 weeks after us. They were 2 German girls whom are lovely and also settled into the Roma life as we did. Toni and I also became good friends with a few of the long term residents at the Royal who were really kind to us and gave us some extra work cleaning or painting on the houses they were working on which gave Toni and I some extra cash. I have not mentioned any names when describing all these people as I’m not sure if they would want to be blogged about, but they know who they are.... Toni and I worked a minimum of 30 hour weeks and Sunday’s were our day off on which we tended to do something whether it be go to the cinema, have BBQ’s with our friends or go on day trips. One Sunday we went to a national park with some of our friends, it is called Carnarvon Gorge and was beautiful. This was a really good day out; we got to see wild Kangaroo’s, aboriginal art, caves, waterfalls and a whole lot of natural beauty.
As you can tell by my endearing and enthusiastic descriptions of the above people and the mention of ‘drunken’ nights more than once, it is clear to see that our first impression of Roma soon changed and we soon settled into our life in this small town... And 8 weeks later when it was time to leave we were very sad to say our goodbyes to this town and all the brilliant people we had met, and whom we will never forget... And to top it off we saved double the amount we had expected to. Our detour into the ‘Outback’ which was not on our original itinerary was defiantly a much needed and welcomed change in our plans. We got to meet some wonderful people and are privileged to have lived and worked in a small ‘ozzy’ town, and thus Roma and all the people will never be forgotten...
Following our departure, one of our friends drove us to Brisbane to catch our flight to Darwin. And on the way we did a quick day tour of the Sunshine Coast which was nice as we had to skip it previously. The Sunshine Coast has several beautiful beaches with lovely little seaside towns and luckily for us the weather was beautiful.....
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