Roma is another one of those places we often fuel up and keep on driving. This time we had planned to stay one night in Roma, visit a few stores for some supplies, check out the local sites, fuel up and leave the next day. After a big day shopping we decided we needed another day to check out some of the things to see and do in Roma.
When is a cow is not a cow. Cattle is a general term used for a herd and can refer to both males and females. They are born a calf either male or female that has not yet reached maturity.
Weaner is a calf that is weaned off it’s mother’s milk usually less than 12 months old. Heifer a female cow that has reached maturity but not yet calved. A cow is a mature female that has given birth.
Bull a mature male that has not been castrated. Steer a castrated male beast. A bullock a steer that is older than 2yrs, usually fatten and sold for beef.
Roma Saleyards is apparently Australia’s largest cattle selling centre. With 300,000-400,000 head of cattle sold yearly. Every Tuesday you can do a free guided tour of the Saleyards and watch the sales happen. Would have been awesome to do but unfortunately we weren’t here on a Tuesday, but next time we plan to be.
You can take a free self guided tour of the Interpretive Centre which is open 7 days a week. In there you can read and hear about the history of Roma Saleyards, discover the technology used these days to track, sell and raise cattle, see the influence technology is having on the cattle industry today. The whole saleyards is a huge affair, a lot more goes into buying and selling cattle than you think. Well worth dropping in for a look. The Saleyards are situated on almost 123 acres.
Ok a few fun facts about cattle that you didn’t know but wished you did 😁
There are about 920 different breeds of cattle in the world.
The average bullock weighs around 560Kg (wouldn’t want it to stand on your toes) and returns around 56% product, around 308kg of meat. Wow.
The largest bulls sold to date in Roma Saleyards was around 1400kg. 😳
Cattle have 360 degrees panoramic vision, able to see most colours, but not red mmm why do matador’s use red flags, and can hear lower and higher frequencies better than humans.
A beast has one stomach with four digestive compartments and can drink the equivalent of a bathtub full of water and eat between 2-5% of their body weight in a day.
We also walked around Roma’s Historic Walk. Looked at the Basset Park Mural, a 100m mural, Lenroy Slab Hut at the Big Rig, Cockatoos Sculpture and Roma’s largest bottle tree with a girth of 9.62m, height 15m and a crown of 23m. It was one big impressive tree.
We also learnt that the Queensland Bottle Tree is guess what native to Qld, easy to grow, can handle extremes in temperatures and is not related to the Western Australian Boab Tree.
We stayed at the Roma Clay Target Gun Club. Approx 2km out of town, very quiet and the cheapest place in town to stay. See WikiCamps for all the details. We would definitely stay here again.
“It’s a Mucka thing, you wouldn’t understand” this statement on the back of a t’shirt in Muckadilla pretty well sums up the place. Not a lot here, a pub, servo, a great mechanic in the back blocks, few homes and a community hall with free camping out the back. There are showers and toilets and a donation box.
“Country good enough to fatten a crow-bar” said local grazier Barry McMullen. There is a lot of history in the Muckadilla area, there are even a few history walks you can do which umm we didn’t find that interesting, a number on a disc showing an empty field of where once a Mobil depot once stood doesn’t hold a lot of interest for us but nevertheless there is history. The local Aborigine Tribe called the creek Muckadilla meaning muddy water. In times gone by Muckadilla was famous for it’s mud baths. People would train in from far and wide to soak in the healing properties of the bore water.
Something of interest to us – we drove through and stopped at Muckadilla in August 10th 2019, where a fire had destroyed the hotel/motel 2 days prior closing the Warrego Hwy.
It was great to see the Mucka Pub rebuilt and looking pretty fine.
