Day 479 | Birdsville: hey, that wasn't so bad

67 km | zzOz total: 15,246 km

Birdsville is one of the legendary localities in Australia in part because of its perceived remoteness but mainly due to the annual horse races when around 6000 party goers descend on the pub, many lobbing in via small plane, into a place that has a usual resident population of 100.

It’s also termination, or start for that matter, of the Simpson Desert Crossing, 1100 8 m high sand dunes along the way to Dalhousie Springs over to the west, finally crossed by Europeans in 1936, but requiring a well equipped vehicle convoy, there’s nothing in the way of civilisation out there, it’s just a sandy track through the remote national park for hundreds of kilometres.

There’s not much here, the famous Birdsville Hotel, originally built in 1884, a famous bakery, kangaroo and curried camel pies a house speciality, a roadhouse or two, the caravan park where I’m stationed down at a lagoon off the Diamantina River, a tree blazed by Burke and Wills on their ill fated trip to cross the continent to the Gulf of Carpentaria, and an artesian bore with water emerging at 98ÂșC.

It’s a month after the races when the place goes crazy for a week, thousands invade the pub although there’s plenty of temporary facilities for the visitors, the place is heating up and the tourists are thinning out, now the school holidays are over you sense it will return to its desolate normality.