Where the Dust Never Settles

Where the Dust Never Settles
Birdsville Cup Races 2009
Quoted in Lonely Planet Australia, “Queensland’s most remote settlement has novelty value on this merit alone, but for brownie points visit during September for one of Australia’s most famous - and perhaps booziest - races. The big event is the annual Birdsville Cup horse races held the first weekend in September. It attracts up to 6,500 racing and boozing enthusiasts from all over Australia- some years there are upwards of 300 airplanes parked in the dust outside Birdsville’s only pub, which trucks in tens of thousands of cans of beer for the weekend carnival!”.


Loading the car on our drive way.... I don't pack light and especially not before camping!

The day I got home from America in June, Michael would not hush about how much he wanted for us to go to Birdsville for the Birdsville Cup Races. Of course I asked just a few questions….

Where is it? 1657 km west of Brisbane in the Outback of Australia
Can we fly there? No, it will take us at least 2 days to drive there
Will it be hot? Very, it is desert but very cold at night
Will I see kangaroos? Only dead on the side of the road or running towrd our car when we are driving
Isn’t that the trip Anthony (Michael’s brother) hit a cow on a couple years ago? Yup!
Where will we stay? Camping in a tent….On the way there, we will pull by the side of the road and camp. When we get to Birdsville we have to hope we can stay in the caravan park with about 3,000 other people.
Can I bring my hair straightener? NO!
My answer: NO!

If you know me, the answers Michael gave me to all of my questions was exactly what I didn’t want to hear. After much convincing, I finally gave in. I complained and whinged until we got on the road on September 1st. The crew includes Anthony (Michael’s brother) and his wife Sherry, and Mickey V. (Michael’s friend) and his girlfriend, Katie. Of course, I pre-made our meals, packed tons of clothes because I was warned of the dust, and showered right before we left.

After I worked all day and Michael went to Uni, we got on the road to Dalby at about 5:30pm on Sept. 1st. As we got further and further from the city (Brisbane) there was less of everything. Less cars, less trees, less toilets, etc..Dalby is approximately 220 kms from Brisbane. Anthony and Sherry met us in Dalby where we stayed at Sherry’s sisters house. Mickey V. and Katie continued onto Roma where they stayed in a motel. They were able to leave earlier than us form Brisbane because they didn’t have to work all day.

September 2nd:

We woke in Dalby at 3:00am and were on the road by 3:20am with an aim at driving 1,100kms to Windorah in one day. Windorah had international yabby races tonight and we thought that would be quite an experience. (Yabbies are fresh water crayfish). On the way from Dalby to Roma, I got to see my first kangaroo, DEAD, and lots of them! We picked up Mickey V. and Katie in Roma at about 6:30am and kept on truckin’. I was amazed at how calm and peaceful the drive was. It was so nice to be able to stop in a little remote town of a couple hundred people along the way. The towns were little country towns of lots of cowboys! From Roma we drove to Mitchell, 88kms, were we stopped to take a dip in the Artesian Springs. Bore water, which comes out of the ground at 38 degrees Celsius is piped up into a spa. We went into the resort like spa area and had our shower for the day. We jumped back on the road with our next destination, Charleville, 178kms. We stopped for Michael to buy a ridiculously expensive Akubra cowboy hat and a loaf of bread. Charleville is a beautiful little town of 600 people and the last place that has reception going west. From Roma onwards there was more road kill than I ever imagined. At one point we counted 22 dead kangaroos in less than 1km distance. It is extremely dangerous to drive once it starts getting dark because kangaroos are nocturnal and this is the area where they are most prominent. Your 4WD must be built like a tank if you are daring enough to drive in the dark. The road trains, which are VERY long trucks, just plow through them because they drive during the night.
We passed though Quilpie, 210kms, to get fuel on our way to Windorah, another 246kms. We had a close encounter with an emu not far out of Quilpie. Between the 3 cars we had driving out to Birdsville we were radioing (UHF) back and forth to each other about what animals or precautions to take ahead. I kept on missing everything the other cars were telling me to look out for and then all of a sudden Mikey sees an emu heading straight toward the side of the car…. He sped up and moved a bit off the road and the emu was still coming towards us until it decided to turn and go the opposite way. Luckily emu’s are smart enough not to plow into a car unlike kangaroos. This emu was taller than our car too!

We knew we were not going to make it to Windorah before dark L and it was pretty close to dusk so we pulled over to the side of the road behind some sand dunes at about 5:15pm. We thought we would rather be safe than sorry! The flies were absolutely horrendous. I have never seen so many in my life. Sherry bought Katie and I a fly net to wear over our heads, which I have to say that and my wellies/gum boots were the 2 things I would not have survived without! First we pulled out some cleansers (drinks), then we put up our tent, made a campfire and some dinner and went to bed for the night. As much as I say I’m not a fan of camping, it is quite relaxing and I always have a very peaceful sleep.

Sept. 3rd:
We woke up at about 6:30am and were on the road to Birdsville at 7:30am. We still had about 120kms to Windorah where we stopped to get fuel. This was the last fuel stop before Birdsville which is 394kms from Windorah. We got 109kms of bitumen (concrete) road and then it was gravel road the rest of the way. It was quite fun driving on the gravel, but the dust was pretty bad. We were very lucky it rained the day before because it settled the dust a bit.

We arrived in Birdsville at about 2:30pm which shows how long it took us to get through that gravel road. The caravan park was already full so we

To Be Continued......