The Races are coming

Tomorrow is the first day of the Birdsville Races. There are people everywhere and the town is starting to look like Shideshow Alley at the Easter Show. There are all sorts of hot food vans and people selling stuff around the main area of town (adjacent to the Pub and the block up to the Shell servo), the caravan park is totally packed and the areas between the town and the race track are covered with vans and people camping out, especially along the river. The area along the river on the Race course side has lots of yards and camping areas for the horses and trainers. This year, there are 170 horses entered.

Fred Brophy's Boxing Tent is set up near the oval opposite the pub, and there is the Nakadoo Rodeo next door, two places you can get yourself seriously hurt for not much money, but very popular nonetheless. The Pub has stripped all its furniture and the wall decorations and is just a large, very crowded barn, and apparently the thing to do is to throw your beercans in the street when you finish with them, and they will get cleaned up at some stage. I'm told the place is awash with beercans by the end of the races.

There was a bit of a scare on Saturday, with some unexpected rain, enough to close the Windorah-Birdsville Road until Wednesday, and a radio announcer foolishly quipped "Looks like the Races will be called off again". Several irate local business people, not to mention the head of the Race Committee, immediately rang, and quite a few announcements re the upcoming races went to air over the next couple of days. Meanwhile, the traffic was backed up in Windorah, which is no bigger than Birdsville, with people sleeping in the Community Hall and on verandahs and all over the place. The police at Quilpie (the next town before Windorah) stopped any more people coming, and Quilpie was filling up too. The road was finally opened Wednesday morning, the story being there was a queue of traffic a kilometre long waiting, with Fred Brophy at the head of it.

Things have been building up at the Bakery, thousands of pies have been going into the freezers in preparation. A whole bunch of Dusty's friends and relatives have turned up to help out, we were tripping over each other to start with, but now its a well-oiled machine. It was deadly quiet Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday when the crowd started to arrive from Windorah was very busy, and today has been non-stop. We're starting to wonder is we've got enough pies after today's crowds.

The TV program Getaway was in this morning to interview Dusty, right in the middle of a rush, it was pretty crazy, but all very exciting. The gang got their T-shirts signed by Dermott.

Evan has been entertaining his sister Helen who arrived on Tuesday, I think they've gone off to see some people get thrown off calves .... I have to go back to work, we're doing pizza this evening. I'll get some pics up as soon as I have a chance.