Longreach Queensland: “This is the real Australia”
There's a crunch of reddish earth underfoot as I approach the launch, which is barely bobbing on its moorings. It's late afternoon, but the mercury's quivering in the mid-thirties. I scan the river and, for a moment, it's impossible to tell where the water ends and the shimmering air begins.
This is Longreach, an outback shire 700 kilometres from the Queensland coast, and, I'm told, "the real 'Straya".
Cruising on the lefeblood of longreach
The area is named for the river I'm about to take a sunset cruise along. The "long reach" of the Thomson extends 3500 kilometres from northeast to central west Queensland, and remains as important to the region's identity – and prosperity – as when Longreach was founded more than a century ago.
When I visit, the region is experiencing its worst drought in living memory. Four years without rain and the Thomson, known to flood the plains in monsoon seasons past, is a series of billabongs imprinted in the cracked, dry landscape. It had struck me as ironic the crew on the flight from Brisbane explained how to use lifejackets. Under the white-hot sky, the only thing I'm in danger of drowning in is my own sweat.
As the cruise sets off, a steady breeze is as refreshing and as welcome as the array of drinks available at the bar. The conductor explains the history of the river and its animal occupants with a few gentle jokes thrown in.
It's late in the tourist season, but the launch is packed with a cross-section of visitors common in Longreach.
There are the "grey nomads" – elderly women with short hair and weathered skin who are traversing the outback in their motorhomes, their children grown and their husbands an unpleasant memory. There are the middle-aged coastal residents, who have ventured inland by road or rail to connect with their country's roots. And there's me, a Kiwi girl from the city, at least 30 years younger than everyone else.
The cruise pauses and we watch turtles churn in the shallows and scrawny Skippies nibble at strands of spiky, sun-bleached grass. Some passengers alight to explore the river bank in all its shades of brown, and we're reminded the ancient coolabah trees make a cameo in Australia's unofficial national anthem. In fact, Waltzing Matilda was penned in Winton, about two hours' drive up the road.
The launch meanders back toward the dock, where dinner is served beneath the stars. Entertainment comes in the form of a contract musterer who says he never imagined being anything else. Clad in a chambray shirt, guitar on his knee, John Hawkes sings of his shenanigans as a stockman. There's a memorable ballad about a time his helicopter ran out of fuel mid-flight.
The meal culminates with enamel cups of billy-brewed tea, to wash down damper smothered in butter and golden syrup. We are bid farewell, and the group heaves itself onto the waiting coach, driven by a man who calls everyone "mate".
Sleeping beneath a slab of history
Wending our way through unlit streets alive with wallaroos, I'm deposited at my "slab hut" at Kinnon & Co. Outback Lodges. A few steps from my cabin, a row of cast-iron bathtubs awaits, should I fancy a moonlight scrub.
The phrase "slab hut" does not convey the level of luxury exacted by these iron-roofed structures. Though modelled on the shelters used by early settlers, it's unlikely the stockmen of yore would have had a canopy bed, walk-in shower and air conditioning as cool as you please.
But in Longreach, you'll never truly escape the bush. The sounds of the outback filter through the roughly-hewn wooden walls – the chorus of cicadas, the scrabble of a bird's claws, the rumble of a nearby road train, the piteous bleat of a lone sheep. And, there are cracks which let the light in.
Stockman's country, sans stock
Historically, Longreach is the stockman's stomping ground, but there isn't a head of cattle in sight. The drought forced farmers to destock years ago – selling cattle at market while they were fat enough to fetch a profit, or shooting them before they starved.
I spot only a few saggy, sunburnt sheep on the roadside, watched beadily by nearby vultures. Even the wallaroos are suffering. Their tendons and ribs protrude from beneath their dirt-coloured fur, and I learn mothers have been abandoning their joeys to stay alive.
It's a mistake, however, to assume tourists are straining Longreach's infrastructure. The shire sits atop one of the greatest natural water reservoirs on the planet – 30-minute showers are just a borehole away. But the vast scale of the stations – some of which are bigger than European countries – means they cannot be irrigated from this source.
Such is the irony of the drought. Far from burdening the region's resources, tourism is propping up the Longreach economy. More than that, I'm told the visitors give locals with nowhere to go comfort they're not forgotten.
"They support everybody when they come out here," Richard Kinnon, a stalwart of Longreach's tourism industry, tells me.
"From the candlestick maker, to the baker."
"But it's the moral support – just knowing people wanna come and have a look at this... They're interested in our way of life, and our land.
"That's what keeps us going."
Life on the station
Kinnon and his wife Marisse launched their tourism micro-empire in 2006, forced to diversify their otherwise agricultural interests because of a five-year-long drought. Today, they offer visitors to Longreach a glimpse into a way of life that – notwithstanding developments in technology – has remained largely unchanged from that of the pioneers.
"The outback here in Queensland, it really has been the kept secret," Kinnon tells me.
"This town once had 10,000 people – there's so many stories.
"This is real Australia, do you know what I mean?"
Kinnon, a man with a sandy moustache, Wrangler jeans and a penchant for sub-zero air conditioning, drives me to Nogo Station, one of the area's oldest. Kinnon tells me the property is normally blanketed in lush, waist-high grass – the bovine answer to ice-cream.
Kinnon's not worried by the prospect of bushfire that has razed homesteads in the past. The earth is so devoid of vegetation there's nothing that would burn.
We drive to a paddock tourists aren't usually taken. It's a moment before I realise what I'm looking at. The tufts of fur and bone in the dirt are the remnants of 40-odd cattle that starved to death before the Kinnons destocked.The remaining herd is grazing along Queensland's government-owned stock routes with a hardy team of drovers, searching for anything edible in the wild red yonder.
They left the station more than two years ago.
The idea is incomprehensible for someone hailing from an island which people traverse on foot in a day. But the spectre of the drought can't fully overshadow the station's beauty. Indeed, the Kinnons' eldest daughter Abigail was married next to a billabong on Nogo two years ago.
"You'd think it was a terrible place for a wedding," Kinnon says, nodding at the parched landscape.
"But she loved it."
Today, Abigail hosts visitors at the homestead, assuming the character of one of the house's original occupants. Dressed in early 1900s garb, Abigail takes guests on a tour of the house, and serves them a home-made smoko.
The colonial decor belies the fact Nogo is a working station. Guests are taken on a "water run" – tending each water supply post on the more than 14,000ha property – and watch a sheep being shorn by a Maori bloke who came to the outback as a boy.
Prehistoric treasuries
Continue on the highway past Nogo, and within hours you'll find yourself in Winton, where opals and dinosaur bones are routinely plucked from the earth.
There's a turnoff that takes me to a "jump up" – a flat-topped mountain rising from the plains – on which is perched the Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum of natural history.
Winton's dinosaurs are one of the region's many little-known stories. Farmers have been spying peculiar rocks on their properties for years, but when Dave Elliott unearthed what turned out to be a thigh bone while mustering sheep in 1999, neighbouring stockmen started giving the rocks a closer look.
Six years later, Elliott's team recovered two near-complete skeletons of undocumented species on nearby Elderslie Station. Since then, five to 10 new species of dinosaur are discovered in the area every year.
"Most of that isn't even found by us," Steve, our guide, explains.
"We have people come up from their stations in their utes with a box full of stuff, going 'Is this that funny rock youse like?'"
The museum's lab is the biggest and fastest dinosaur fossil preparation facility in the southern hemisphere, having evolved from a lean-to shearing shed into an airy warehouse.
Steve explains the operation is largely funded by volunteers, some of whom return year after year to work at Australia's Jurassic Park.
In the field, volunteer excavators need no qualifications or experience, as long as they're aged 18 years or older.
They soon learn how to discern dinosaur bones from petrified wood.
"You lick 'em," Steve says, to raised eyebrows.
"The bone sticks to your tongue."
The whine of dental-like tools pierces the air as he adds their oldest volunteer is aged 84. The novelty value is clear.
"Even when you only find a little bit of dinosaur bone, you know, you're the first person in the world to see that," Steve says.
"There's not many firsts left anymore."
Forging a life in the middle of nowhere
Returning to Longreach, there's a flash of ruby red on roadside: the distinctive tail of a Qantas airplane, a bird returned home to roost.
Longreach had seemed an odd birthplace for Australia's national airline but, when I learn some stations are more than 500km from their closest neighbours, I begin to appreciate how life-changing, and in some cases, life-saving, air access to the region has been.
The Qantas Founders Museum complex houses the airline's original terminal and hangar from the early 1900s, as well as a vast display of multimedia exhibits telling how four men overcame "the tyranny of distance" with a scheme that became one of the world's largest airlines.
Visitors can explore a decommissioned Boeing 747 and 707, wander along the wings, and sit in the cockpit.
The 707, named "The City of Canberra", offers an insight into how the other half lives. The first Qantas jet aircraft registered in Australia, the plane was originally fitted with rich wooden panelling and gold trim. Past occupants include members of the Saudi royal family, and Michael Jackson.
As I try my hand at the 747's controls, my guide Peter recalls doing the same as a youngster – the Englishman's dad was a ground engineer for British Airways.
"When I was only about nine years old, we used to go on a Sunday morning to the airport and we'd go up in those 707s," he remembers.
"We'd sit in the cockpit, me and my sister, as they'd tow it out of the hangar."
"Dad's not alive anymore, but if he knew what I was doing now, he'd love it – to see this sort of thing."
The appeal, however, extends beyond life-long aviation enthusiasts. When I board my flight back to Brisbane, I've never had greater respect for the craft that carries us. I just try to ignore the fact the engine's got only six bolts tacking it to the plane.
Written by Brittany Main. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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