Downtown Boulia – population a bit over 400, which is big when you consider the population of the entire shire (61,176 square kilometres or 23,620 square miles) is only 600   – is lodged on the Flinders Highway between the townships of Bedourie and  Mount Isa. 

It’s the sort of town where little things matter – can make a significant difference – like the arrival of a new family of four can mean the difference between having three teachers at your school or two.

Its late in the day when I arrived. The heat is oppressive, and sweat keeps cutting a track down your back.  On my way in I had stopped to view the mostly dry Burke River. This is where the Irish policeman Robert O’Hara Burke and  William John Wills stopped for a drink before naming the river after themselves.

Standing out here you marvel at this country’s propensity for turning abject failure into iconic figures in our history. Burke and Wills, poorly prepared and equipped, with little real experience, leading a team of six Irishmen, five Englishmen, four Afghan camel drivers, three Germans and one American, failed miserably as explorers but still managed to be considered heroes. Still, there is a fine line between bravery and stupidity.

I had driven from the lush rainforest of Cairns, over a combination of asphalt roads giving way to hard gravel roads, full of potholes, ruts and cement hard corrugations. It’s wild, big blue sky, tough arsed country. Out here the land can be deadly, a wrong turn, a poor decision and lives can be lost in the isolation and heat.  You drive for hours before hitting the flat red plains of the channel country littered with clumps of Mitchell grass.

The landscape is brilliantly hot and empty and as you drive you marvel that there are cattle stations out here bigger than some European countries. The cattle trucks you see are huge are huge. They start out on the distant horizon the size of a tinka truck but roar at you like some sixty wheeled angry monster. The road is wide enough to take a four wheel drive with a few inches to spare either side. The monsters show no inclination of moving over so it seems wiser to quit this lopsided game of chicken and pull over.

 Boulia is much the same as any other small, regional Australian community. Here, people fill multiple roles. Looking around town you come across bob the tyre man – and bob the Iceman, not to forget Bob of the small goods and groceries – oh, and the man you see for gas supplies. There’s not much you can’t get in his store. Some of it has even been acquired recently. Some of the goods have seen better days.

No matter how big or small, communities have two things in common – a community hall somewhere commemorating the district’s fallen and a racetrack – except out here it’s camel races.

I check into the local motel – which is pretty much like every other pub and motel I have stayed in rural and regional New South Wales and Queensland. Overhead fans are the same and move with the same slowness. You can get lost in their lazy movement and lulled with the comforting whumpa, whumpa, whumpa sound.

It’s been a long couple of days driving from Cairns so I retired to the The Australian Hotel  – for a couple of beers and find I am being served by a couple of Irish backpackers – why they are here – what drew them from the softness of Ireland to the brutal heat of western Queensland is a mystery but I am too tired to pretend interest and settle down to enjoy the cold beer and the beauty of the Irish lilt as a  retreat from the heat. Eventually, spurred by the beer and the tiredness that follows long drives in oppressive heat, I  retire to the motel and lie on the bed watching the fan. Whumpa, whumpa, whumpa – the sound lulls you into and thinking about the childhood memories in a different state and another time and you wonder where the time has gone.