The Rodeo Queen is crowned in Mount Isa at a ball, usually held about a week beforehand, with the Queen required to travel immediately to the Cloncurry Merry Muster and promote the Isa Rodeo. The Charity Queen is announced on Thursday, sponsors night at Kalkadoon Park, eve of the Mount Isa Rodeo and both Queens from the previous year hand over their crowns and sashes.
 
"The Rodeo Queen and Charity Queen's duties include making VIP guests and out of towners feel welcome. They introduce themselves to the crowd, present some of the prizes and take part in the lap of honour in the arena. At Camooweal, the Queen rides herself. But Mount Isa Queens don't have to ride and that's one of the things I missed. That was a really fun part."
 
Regina was a barrel racer until the birth of her daughter, Sahrina, in October 1997. The name flashed into her head while she was thinking of home at Flora, and she subsequently discovered it meant "Princess" in Arabic, appropriate for the daughter of a Queen. The little girl has been seated on a horse already. Regina's life ambition is to acquire and run her own station, to have something to pass on to her daughter. In the meantime, she works as a broadcaster for an FM community radio station in Mount Isa, and dreams of "the open spaces, the air, the station atmosphere, the cattle and horses outside the front door".
 
"For the Camooweal Rodeo, we had pyjama parties behind the pub, a fancy dress disco at the Race Club. We had a rodeo where my family and I held a food stall and a bar - we got a license for that and we raised a fair bit of money there. When I was entered in the Mount Isa Rodeo Queen Quest, I thought I didn't even have a chance in hell of winning anything, but in four weeks I raised my target, which was $10,000. I held heaps and heaps of raffles. I had a grog raffle, a beer raffle, a chocolate raffle - 500 boxes of chocolates to sell, and they made about, I think, $1000 alone."
 
"I did all the ringing up. I faxed letters to the North Queensland Cowboys in Townsville and asked them to donate prizes to me - they did. I was seeing business houses in Mount Isa - they donated to me. But most of my support came from Camooweal."
 
"My buckle's got two rubies in it, part of it is gold plated and the rest is copper. I wear it everywhere and I feel naked if I don't have it on. My boyfriend calls it my dinner plate, but I've seen some buckles three times as big as this one, and believe me, before I'd won it I would never have worn a buckle in my life - never. I take it as a great privilege to wear this. I earned it, and that's why I wear it, because it's mine to show."
 
"Sometimes I wear my shirts tucked in but with a vest over the top and you might meet someone who gets a certain impression of you, and then you take the vest off and you've got this great big buckle on, and they say, 'Wow, I didn't see that before'. Then it becomes a conversation piece."