{"id":551268,"date":"2026-03-19T20:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/551268\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T20:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:24:13","slug":"just-two-flavours-of-chips-and-pub-theme-nights-how-these-isolated-queensland-towns-have-survived-being-cut-off-for-weeks-australia-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/551268\/","title":{"rendered":"Just two flavours of chips and pub theme nights: how these isolated Queensland towns have survived being cut off for weeks | Australia weather"},"content":{"rendered":"

To many city dwellers, becoming trapped for weeks where you live would be a terrifying prospect. Not so for the remote outback towns of Birdsville<\/a> and Bedourie on the edge of the Munga-Thirri Simpson desert. Five weeks after flooding cut off roads into the towns, the residents\u2019 biggest complaint is that the local store is down to two flavours of chips.<\/p>\n

Since early February, the rural Queensland communities which border both the Northern Territory and South Australia have only been accessible by plane. Flooding has turned<\/a> the orange outback green-blue and, with further heavy rainfall and flooding forecast in the coming days, the dirt roads aren\u2019t expected to open for another month.<\/p>\n

Luckily the towns \u2013 which have a combined population of about 260 \u2013 are pretty used to isolation.<\/p>\n

Map of Australia showing where the floods are at Bedourie and Birdsville<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1974, locals<\/a> were cut off for about four months after flooding severed the Birdsville Track and required locals to transport goods by boat. They were shut off for six weeks last year<\/a> by flooding in excess of 1974 levels, with prolonged rainfall filling Lake Eyre<\/a> \u2013 something that only happens a handful of times in a generation.<\/p>\n

The deluge has led to the cancellation of the Big Red Bash festival, the world\u2019s most remote music festival, which was set to take place in Birdsville in July. But both towns have avoided flood damage \u2013 Bedourie is protected by a levee bank, which stands 1.2 metres above the 1974 flood levels \u2013 and there are plenty of supplies.<\/p>\n

\"DogDog rescued by helicopter from raging flood waters in Northern Territory \u2013 video<\/p>\n

Jenna Brook, who operates Birdsville\u2019s service station, post office and grocery store, says the town typically has a \u201cgood stockpile\u201d of non-perishable groceries in anticipation of road closures. She\u2019s been coordinating with the government to fly in essential supplies \u2013 but that doesn\u2019t include things like soft drinks, cigarettes, snacks or bottled water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese resupply flights are great, but \u2026 no one would ask people in Brisbane to go four weeks without being able to resupply chocolate and soft drinks,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u2018We just adjust\u2019<\/p>\n

Station owner David Brook was born in Birdsville in 1947 and has never lived anywhere else. His cattle haven\u2019t been impacted by the recent flooding \u2013 in fact, it\u2019s likely to be the \u201cbest season\u201d he\u2019s had due to the high rainfall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe these falls,\u201d says Brook, who is Jenna\u2019s father. \u201cIt\u2019s not unusual for these rivers to flood very big, but it\u2019s very unusual to get it all the way down halfway through South Australia as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

Brook says it doesn\u2019t take much for the dirt roads to shut.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get 30mm of rain and it\u2019s all over. Well, we\u2019ve had a couple of hundred,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Birdsville surrounded by flood waters. Essential items such as fruit and veg, meat, bread and pet food are resupplied by air. Photograph: Diamantina shire council<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a testing time, because lifestyles are a bit different today. You get used to being able to get the food you want. People want to get fresh milk, and then you have to tell them it\u2019s only long life.\u201d<\/p>\n

During periods of isolation, Queensland<\/a> government guidelines only allow communities to resupply essential items by air, which means fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and bread, basic groceries, pet food and medical supplies. Last Friday, Bedourie received its first delivery of mail in five weeks, with 519kg arriving by air.<\/p>\n

Jenna Brook says her store \u2013 the only one in Birdsville \u2013 is down to just two flavours of chips at the moment.<\/p>\n

Birdsville Hotel is hosting theme nights to entertain locals. \u2018They\u2019re not feeling like \u201coh we\u2019re stuck in Birdsville\u201d,\u2019 manager Ben Fullagar says. Photograph: Khalli-Koopah Rowlands<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they\u2019re not selling very well, so I\u2019m going to guess they\u2019re not people\u2019s favourite flavours. But we just adjust and try to lengthen out how long our supplies will last.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brook says it can be stressful for the community to deal with travel disruptions \u2013 flying is extremely expensive to get to and from remote towns. But at the same time, \u201cif we ran out of Tim Tams and chocolate, that\u2019s a big problem\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cA double standard here is that we are asked to be resilient more often and for longer periods of time than places where there\u2019s more votes and where there\u2019s more people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desert is transformed<\/p>\n

Bedourie is home to 150 people, while Birdsville is home to about 110 although that swells to more than 7,000 during its annual races in September. Birdsville also forms a popular tourist destination for travellers visiting the nearby Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre and starting the famous 517km Birdsville Track to Marree.<\/p>\n

Diamantina shire mayor Francis Murray \u2026 \u2018There\u2019s enough old hands here to guide the new ones through.\u2019 Photograph: Michael Adams\/Griffith University<\/p>\n

While Francis Murray, the mayor of the Diamantina shire, which encompasses Birdsville and Bedourie, says he\u2019s used to isolation, both communities have a \u201cpretty transient\u201d population.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s plenty of people in the community that [being cut off] is new to,\u201d Murray says. \u201cBut there\u2019s enough old hands here, too, to guide the new ones through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Fullagar, the general manager of the Birdsville Hotel and local plane service Birdsville Aviation, has been in Birdsville for 13 years, and says everyone remembers their first flood and road closures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, over time, you realise that it\u2019s quite a normal part of life in channel country, and then you start to look at people who live on the coast and think that they don\u2019t live such normal life,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey look at us and think we\u2019ve got all these challenges with weather, whereas we look at the coast and go, well, they\u2019ve got all these challenges with social pressures and traffic. It\u2019s just a different lifestyle, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

The pub has been \u201cpoking along\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, there\u2019s only a limited amount of people in town,\u201d Fullagar says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been having big Friday theme nights to entertain the locals while the roads are closed. This Friday we\u2019re doing American prom night, we\u2019ve had disco nights \u2026 They\u2019re not feeling like \u2018oh we\u2019re stuck in Birdsville\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar situations may happen more often in the future. Australia experienced its fourth-warmest year on record in 2025, according to the Bureau of Meteorology<\/a>. Global heating, driven mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, has increased the frequency and severity of extreme weather events.<\/p>\n

Parts of the desert are turning from red to green and wildflowers are beginning to bloom. Photograph: Diamantina shire councilRain will bring the channel country to life<\/p>\n

Once the rain recedes, Fullagar says there is a profound beauty to the changed landscape. Parts of the Simpson desert are turning from red to green and proliferating with bright purple, red and yellow wildflowers that bring a backdrop of white pelicans.<\/p>\n

Lake Eyre is also filling to a level \u201cnot seen since the 1970s\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt brings the channel country to life like you\u2019ve never experienced,\u201d Fullagar says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see because it just becomes this oasis of health and growth. There\u2019s never going to be a year like this to see the outback.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s never going to be a year like this to see the outback,\u2019 Fullagar says. Photograph: Khalli-Koopah Rowlands<\/p>\n

Murray saw it for himself helping to resupply to properties this week in a chopper, and says \u201cwhat was once brown is now green, and what\u2019s green is like glass\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously our tourism season is going to start late because nobody can get here at the moment,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the desert has been completely transformed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To many city dwellers, becoming trapped for weeks where you live would be a terrifying prospect. Not so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-551268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}