Birdsville

There was a bypass around Betoota, but seriously, who could pass up the opportunity to visit a town where the official population is zero. You may or may not of heard of The Betoota Advocate (https://www.betootaadvocate.com/), a satirical on-line newspaper. Apparently they wanted the name from the smallest town in Australia, and they weren’t wrong. One pub, nothing else.

It was however, a hell of a set-up. It took two years for the owners to restore the iconic hotel to ‘open’, and then four days later covid hit Oz. So it’s been tough. Judging by the steady stream of visitors in the short time I was there, they’re goin’ to be OK.

Two hours later, I wheeled into Birdsville. I had booked myself into a caravan park for the week to have a good look around. The Big Red Bash is on in a few weeks(more of that later), and I wanted to beat the rush. The flies(OMG!) however were lying in wait. Birdsville is on the Diamantina River and only 11klm from the South Australian border. This town is remote, writ large. No doctor, no pharmacy, one medical centre, one nurse. Scripts are flown in twice a week from Charleville, 840 klms away. No supermarket, one cafe, one bakery, two roadhouses. For someone who hasn’t seen a Coles, Woolies or Aldi for nearly two months, you’d find a more extensive in-house menu at a Salvo’s soup kitchen. How dire?- I’m down to the last of the sourdough – this is serious!!

I passed the Birdsville Racetrack on my way in and after setting up, drove back for a closer look. The track itself is huge. With a 400metre straight, it’s probably as big as Flemington or Randwick and no horse would ever pull up lame. The surface is soft compacted sand, which is why they hold the annual event in September, after a long dry winter. No problem getting in and roaming around.

This time of the year, from June to September, is events season in and around Channel Country. The first round of the Queensland Outback Golf Championship, just happened to be on while I was in town. Bad memories form my last foray onto an outback course followed me to the course. The difference was chalk and cheese. Very much like a Scottish links course, wide fairways and very few obvious hazards. The biggest threat to a good game are the crows, that delight in swooping down and stealing golf balls. One player said that they had lost 10 in the course of a round to these critters. Of course, those oil greens are an artform that requires mastering, but the players had a routine that seemed to work.

Of course, any outback event attracts a crowd and it must been a real experience dining out under the stars.

Back at the caravan park, things were starting to hot up, slowly filling over a few days. My week was coming to to an end but there was plenty of free camping options on the edge of town and there were still one attraction that was on the agenda – Big Red.