We're off to Birdsville

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165km from Bedourie to Birdsville. The road was actually quite good for the best part of the drive – there were a couple stretches of gravel (about 70km in total) including some significant roadwork where they are in the throes of sealing the Birdsville Developmental Road. There was a single lane detour at the side of the works for about 600m. We waited for a 4WD to come through from the south and as he approached us he warned about “2 puddles but they had solid bottoms”. We drove through carefully but it was deep enough t give us a good outback bath.



Arriving in Birdsville we headed straight to The Common – it covers a vast area on the southern side of town with a comfortable 2km walk back in. Sunhats on we went in hoping to do our check in for the Bash to be told that doesn’t open until Saturday. We aren’t due to roll in to the Bash site until Monday, so we decided to organise that either Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning, depending on the queue.



The Birdsville Hotel (built in 1884) is one of the iconic Australian pubs and we were determined to have a drink and photo there. It was relatively quiet on the Saturday so we thought early afternoon was as good a time as any! The pub, built of sandstone, has endured fire, flood and even a cyclone and it seems that every man and his dog (literally) makes a bee line to it for a photo opportunity and a beer. I think it is the one time that the local police officer might ignore any parking infringements as many cars pulled up too close to the intersection for their happy snap.



Back to The Common where vans, camper trailers and all manner of 4WD setups continuously arrived throughout the afternoon. There were 1000’s!

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