"I’m afraid that you’ll have to carry the map!" said Michael, as we both climbed into the cockpit of the old red ’49 Cessna. It was emergent dawn and we were plotting an eight hundred mile journey that would take us in low flight out over the cattle stations and the properties of the Darling Downs to the Birdsville Hotel, one of the remotest pubs in the Australian outback.

A few minutes later, we were airborne, travelling westwards from Toowoomba, watching the fertile green fields of Dalby slowly melt into a carpet of paprika coloured scrubland. Exactly how this isolated pub, in a town with a population of only eighty people, became such an iconic traveller’s destination remains unclear. It may have been the attraction of the barren landscapes, loosely studded with spinifex and forlorn coolabah trees, but most felt it was probably related to the nearby racetrack. In a few weeks time, over 7,000 people from all over the continent would descend upon the town and watch the second spectacle of the Australian equestrian year, the annual Birdsville races. For the inhabitants of the costal cities who flocked here, this outback community represented another way of life, the pioneering spirit of their forefathers and for a long weekend in September, their pub touched the soul of the nation.

. We refuelled the plane in Charleville, allowing me to meet some colleagues from the RFDS and obtain some aeronautical maps of the region known as Channel Country, the dry floodplain between the Diamantina and Georgina rivers. It was obvious whoever named the place must have had an Aussie sense of humour, as the average rainfall for a year was about eight inches, probably not enough to fill a billycan and brew a cup of coffee. We deferred the idea of having a few stubbies, as an old Cessna is not famed for many luxuries, especially its toilet facilities. About 5.30 in the evening, we landed on the hot bitumen of Birdsville and made our way towards the famous hotel. I could see immediately that it exuded the classic outback décor, the long jarrah-wooden counter, the intrusive flyscreens, and the obligatory yellow and green Castlemaine XXXX towels, which usually doubled as beer mats. Everything seemed a little measured at first, but it all began to make more sense after Craig, the barman, quenched our desert thirst with a few tinnies from his Fifties-style fridge. He told us that we had arrived at the right time, as he had recently increased his stocks in anticipation of the crowds that would be arriving for the races. The local stockhands appeared to control the jukebox, which kept playing some old Eagles numbers, familiar melodies that I wished I could still remember the words off and consequently immediately fit right in. It’s an awful thing, peer pressure in the outback.

A station hand, called Bobby, brought us up to date on his problems with dingoes and informed us of the length of the world's longest fence, which he reckoned was the only man-made structure to be seen from the moon. The fact that the Great Wall of China was another serious contender didn’t really seem to wash any ice with him. In between large helpings of ‘Bundy and Coke’ he also told us that feral cats the size of large dogs now roamed in packs in the outback and that Donald Campbell had broken the world land speed record on a salt lake very close to here, in 1964. Yes, Bobby!, I could see that fellow conspiratory tourists could be guaranteed a very interesting night. To be fair to him, I later found out that Lake Eyre was in fact down the road and not in America as I had previously thought. The jury remained out on the feral cats. It was Saturday, and before long, the old bar and myself began to fill up, the area in front of me slowly becoming a blurry canvas of khaki Akubra hats, yellow Queensland shirts, and spent tinnies. The music grew louder and any hopes of a further intelligent conversation ended with the muted sounds of a local ringer who repeatedly told me "No worries, Mate!" every time he looked up from his beer on the counter. Andy, I thought, you should do yourself a favour and join up with Bobby for a beer. 

Like most outback pubs, the only women present were those serving behind the bar. They were diligent and served us some "Aussie Burgers", a great tower of bread, meat, fried egg, salad, chips, onion and beetroot, so cleverly constructed that they could squirt sauce on your new Calvin Klein jeans even before you took the first bite.
"Where are you from mate?" said an overindulged Aboriginal jackaroo standing at the corner of the bar. He was short and squat, with large shoulders on his muscular body and it was obvious that many hard years of drinking grog made him look older than his natural age. His eyes were glazed and his loud voice could be heard all over the bar.

"Oh, Ireland", he repeated, with an air of geographical knowledge that one is not used to hearing in the outback, and one that I was sure had probably earned him many a stubbie from passing tourists.

"Do you know it?" I inquired.

"Of course, man, my second name is O’ Brien!" he said, taking out his driving licence and throwing it on the bar counter. I was long aware that many of the Aboriginals had taken Irish names when they were originally educated and passed no further comment. A dog scampered under my barstool, nosing his way through the remnants of some Samboy crisps that were spilled on the floor. I watched how the local stockhands put their spare change into a plastic RFDS collection box that was placed unattached on the bar and thought about how it would be chained to the counters back home. The Aboriginal jackaroo then started to become boisterous to a customer and when he started fighting, some staff intervened and showed him to the door.

I watched him as he left, as a mischievous grin appeared on his cragged face and he turned back to me and said.

"That’s the bloody problem with us Irish, everywhere we go, we just can’t hold our drink!"