Birdsville

Birdsville sits almost exactly where Queensland runs out, on the edge of the Simpson Desert, closer to Sydney than it is to Brisbane in every way that actually matters. I arrived on a Tuesday in the off-season and the whole town — a hotel, a bakery, a servo, a few dozen houses — felt like it existed purely as a rumour that happened to have a postcode. The Birdsville Hotel, sandstone-built in 1884, is essentially the entire reason the town has a reason, and I drank a beer on its verandah watching a dust devil cross the empty street with the specific slow drama of something that knew it had all the time in the world.

Then there’s the Birdsville Races, held every September since 1882, when this town of around a hundred permanent residents swells to over six thousand people who fly, drive, and truck in from across the country for two days of horse racing on a dirt track surrounded by nothing. I wasn’t there for the races themselves but talked to a publican who described the airport during race weekend as briefly the busiest in Queensland, light planes queued up on the strip like it was Sydney at rush hour. The contrast between that and the silence I actually experienced was almost impossible to picture honestly.

What I did get was the Birdsville Track itself, the 517-kilometre unsealed route south to Marree that opened up this whole stretch of the outback to cattle droving in the 1880s and still demands respect — I checked road conditions with the police station before setting a single kilometre of it, standard practice out here where “impassable” is not a suggestion. I drove a short section at dusk and watched wild brumbies cross ahead of the car, unbothered, in silhouette against a sky doing something violently orange.

When to go: May through September for tolerable daytime heat, or specifically the first weekend of September for the Birdsville Races if you want the town at its loudest instead of its quietest. Book accommodation many months ahead for race weekend — there effectively isn’t any left otherwise.