Out the swing doors of either of this town’s two pubs, past the old railway tracks and the one-strip airport, vast plains stretch beyond all horizons. Tin-roofed houses perch on blocks of red dirt and bore-fed lawn near the banks of the broad Bulloo River. The Bulloo is dry most of the year but for clay-coloured billabongs lined by coolabah trees, until it bursts its banks with monsoonal flood waters that drain to ephemeral inland lakes.
Welcome to Quilpie, nearly 1,000km west of Brisbane.
