A Brief History

Originally home to the Mandandanji Aboriginal people and visited twice by explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, Roma was settled after Sir Thomas Mitchell reported glowingly on the country in 1846. Looking down from nearby Mount Abundance, Mitchell wrote, “I … beheld the finest country I had ever seen in a primeval state – a champaign region, spotted with wood, stretching as far as human vision or even the telescope would reach.” Allan McPherson established Mount Abundance Station the following year.

The Queensland Government established Roma as an administrative centre for the growing district in 1862. The town took its name from the wife of Queensland’s first Governor, the Countess Diamantina Roma, and was the first gazetted settlement following Queensland’s separation from New South Wales in 1859.

Steeped in colourful history since its inception, Roma gave Queensland its first wine in 1863 and, in 1900, the town was the site of Australia’s first natural gas strike which sparked a short-lived oil ‘boom’ during the Depression years. Notorious bushranger Harry Redford (the legendary Captain Starlight) was cleared of cattle rustling in his controversial trial in Roma in 1873, having stolen 1,000 cattle, which were driven to South Australia, a feat immortalized in the novel Robbery Under Arms.