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She works 16 hours a week at the station as an administrative assistant, since the building also doubles as a Queensland Government Agency, processing vehicle and gun license paperwork, as well as paying out $21 for each dingo scalp brought in by local shooters, as part of efforts to control the native dog. A sign on the fridge reads "Birdsville Social Club - All drinks, all chocolates, $1.00." The club has two members - him and his wife, Sandra, who is a blonde 60-year-old with brown eyes. Usually, however, McShane’s weekday mornings are much, much quieter than this. The tourists’ Thursday-morning queries are the calm before the storm of the next few days, when an annual horse-racing event first held in 1882 brings with it an influx of people, alcohol, money, and the potential for violence. Tall, clean-shaven, silver-haired, and in possession of eyes as blue as his spotless police uniform, the officer-in-charge is a picture of friendly authority as he interacts with these strangers. “Stay outside the town limits, and you can camp anywhere,” McShane replies with a grin. They look as though they’ve had a few interactions with police over the years, not all of them positive. #DESERT WITH TUMBLEWEED GIF SKIN#Next, a couple of rough-looking blokes with leathery, tattooed skin and abundant facial hair from Boulia, an over six-hour drive north, ask about camping away from the racetrack crowds. “If you leave Sunday, you’ll be suckin’ dust all the time, ay.” They ask McShane for his wisdom on making an exit back east. Then, in walks an arguing middle-aged couple, who have somehow made it here in their two-wheel-drive Ford Focus, a small car whose clearance is barely high enough to avoid the baseball-sized rocks that litter the wide gravel roads leading into town. Once a year, during the first weekend of September, this sleepy desert town sparks to life, relatively speaking. Locals say the population is 80 people, half of whom are Indigenous Australians, but the sign posted outside of town notes that the population is "115, +/- 7,000." After driving over a thousand miles to be here, seeing that sign somehow quickens the pulse. Shooting stars are seen more often than cars on the main street, which might be used by 30 vehicles on a busy day.įor most residents of Queensland, Australia’s second-largest state by area, Birdsville will only ever be a geographic curiosity seen at the edge of the map on the nightly weather report. #DESERT WITH TUMBLEWEED GIF FREE#When the airstrip’s runway-lights system is switched off at night, a stroll along this route reveals the breathtaking volume and variety of stars overhead, which flicker brightly, knowingly, free of all light pollution. The police station is situated at the edge of town, a short walk up the main street, toward the pub, the combined grocery store–cum–fuel station, a tiny airport, the school, and the clinic. It is manned by an officer who chooses not to carry a gun, because he has no need to. Birdsville State School has five students. If you want to see a film or live music, you’re in the wrong town. ![]() If you want to buy basic groceries, you’ll have to settle for whatever Birdsville Roadhouse has in stock. If you fall ill, you’ll be treated at the Birdsville Clinic, and flown nearly a thousand miles to the state capital if you can’t be fixed there. If you want to buy alcohol, you can do so from either place. If you want to visit a restaurant, you have one option: the Birdsville Hotel. In Birdsville, if you want to buy a coffee, you have one option: the Birdsville Bakery. On hot days - which is most of them - bush flies revel in the stark stillness, incessantly seeking out the moisture of sweaty human skin. On windy days, the red dust from the desert blows across the town’s few dozen buildings, adding a fine film of rusty grit that bonds itself to every surface. It is not quite self-sufficient, as most goods are either trucked in via hundreds of miles of snaking gravel tracks dotted with roadkill kangaroos and carrion birds, or flown in via the twice-weekly mail service. That a town was built here at all is testament to either human willpower or outright folly. Established in 1881, the town abuts the edge of the Simpson Desert, an enormous expanse that consists of more than 1,000 sand dunes. On a map of Australia, Birdsville is situated toward the middle of the country, yet its remoteness is so absolute that it might as well be on another planet. ![]()
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