The West Was Won: Rogue Chef Hits the Road as Queensland Fringe's Firs

1,472km. One caravan. A ute full of produce, a chef's knife roll, and a mission: cook like it's a five-star pass, in places that haven't seen fine dining since never.

When Queensland Fringe asked Rogue Chef to come on board as their inaugural Rogue in Residence, there wasn't a lot of thinking to do. This was the first year for the festival, a brand-new idea to take world-class arts and food out of Brisbane and put it on the doorstep of regional Queensland instead. Charleville. Augathella. Roma. Toowoomba. Towns that don't usually get a festival like this, let alone a chef showing up to cook off the back of a fire.

So we packed the van (a genuinely beautiful, fully kitted-out Adventurer caravan, generously supplied by Camperland Brisbane), loaded the car with as much good produce as we could carry, and headed west with the crew.

Mitchell: cold nights, a serious coffee machine, and Wes Carr

First stop was Mitchell, and it was bloody cold, the kind of cold that makes you grateful for a fully-equipped van. This is where we linked up properly with the Queensland Fringe crew, including Wes Carr, the singer-songwriter who'd be performing his way along the whole route with us. We set up camp at the Major Mitchell Caravan Park, clean, welcoming, genuinely worth a stop if you're ever passing through.

Big call of the whole trip: Becky made it a condition of coming along that we bring the big coffee machine in the caravan. I wasn't sure we had the room for it. She was right and I was wrong. It paid off every single morning, the team were lined up at our door for a proper coffee before anyone had even started the fire.

On top of that, Becky was behind the camera the entire trip. Contento Studios is her business, and she captured every second of this journey while somehow also keeping me caffeinated, fed on coffee and completely covered on content. Makes my job look easy.

[Photo: the van, departure and the morning coffee queue]

Charleville: the Mayor, the butcher, and a pub called Corones

Next stop, Charleville, where the local Mayor, Zoro, also happens to be the town butcher. He sorted us out with some seriously good bacon, which became breakfast the next morning for the whole travelling crew: the Jayco, Brisbane Camperland and Bartons families who'd joined the journey. We were staying at the Cobb & Co Caravan Park, and by the time breakfast was going the whole park smelled like bacon. Not a bad way to start a day.

That night, Wes played a set at the Hotel Corones, a proper, bloody good country pub, the kind of room where a song lands differently.

[Photo: Hotel Corones set]

Augathella: sashimi at the old bowls club

Then it was on to Augathella, and the old Augathella Bowls Club, rusting a bit, hadn't seen a game of bowls in a long time. I'd been carrying a box of incredible Walkers Seafood tuna all the way from the coast for exactly this moment, and knocked up a tuna sashimi dish while Wes belted out tunes for the locals. Safe to say Augathella hasn't seen a sashimi plate on a table in quite a while either, but that's the whole point of this festival: taking things regional Queensland doesn't normally get, and putting it right in front of them.

Neil Turner Weir: the off-grid dinner

The next morning we packed up and drove out to Neil Turner Weir for the big one: a full off-grid night, cooking an entire dinner over open fire with nothing but the van, the coals, and what we'd carried out there. On the menu: tomahawks slow-cooked over the fire, marinated chickens, whole lamb racks, duck fat potatoes, charred broccolini, and to finish, a camp oven bread and butter pudding. No power. No kitchen. Just fire, good produce, and a lot of trust in the process.

Roma: gin, tonic, and the end of the outback leg

From there it was on to Roma, and a very welcome stop at Western Queensland Spirits, the local distillery, for what I can only describe as a well-earned gin and tonic (or several). This was where the outback leg of the tour officially wrapped: a proper toast to a run of towns, kitchens-that-weren't-kitchens, and everyone who'd made the drive worthwhile.

Toowoomba: the big finale

We rolled into Toowoomba for the festival's grand finale, and swapped the campfire for a front-row seat at The Empire Theatre. Caught Jim Jefferies tearing the room apart, and then Saturday night belonged to the music: Vanessa Amorosi brought the house down, and Wes Carr closed the whole thing out. After a week on the road with him, watching Wes send off the entire festival on its final night hit different.

Why it mattered

Queensland Fringe's whole idea is that regional Queensland deserves major cultural experiences on its own doorstep: jump in the car, travel through the state, stay overnight, eat locally, meet the artists. Being asked to be part of that as the festival's first-ever Rogue in Residence, cooking alongside acts like Wes Carr in pubs, bowls clubs and paddocks instead of dining rooms, is about as close to the Rogue Chef ethos as it gets.

None of it happens without Tom Oliver, who dreamed up Queensland Fringe and drove it into being from a disused pavilion in Augathella to a statewide festival in its very first year. And none of it happens without the people who kept the whole show fed, watered and moving: Jacque and John Armstrong, who looked after us all week, with John jumping in as my unofficial sous chef whenever things got busy. Legend.

This is what "cooking without rules" actually looks like out on the road: a butcher-mayor, a caravan park worth recommending, tuna sashimi in a town that's forgotten what bowls sounds like, a full fire-cooked feast under the stars at a weir most people have never heard of, and a finale night that went out with Jim Jefferies, Vanessa Amorosi and Wes Carr.

Cook Wild. Live Rogue. Fork the Rules.

Rogue Chef was proud to be the inaugural Rogue in Residence for the first Queensland Fringe Festival, August 2026, 1,472km through Charleville, Augathella and Roma, finishing with a two-day finale at The Empire in Toowoomba. Huge thanks to Tom Oliver and the Queensland Fringe crew for having us along, to Camperland Brisbane for the van, to Jacque and John Armstrong for keeping us going, and to Becky and Contento Studios for capturing every second (and for insisting on the coffee machine).