Those aren't rainwater tanks that you can see in Quilpie but cooling tanks — for the water emerges from the underground artesian bore at a blistering 75 degrees centigrade!
Consequently, no hot water systems are needed in this small Outback Queensland town, about 1000 kilometres west of Brisbane. Here green-fingered locals water their plants only with sprinklers and from a great distance, so as to avoid burning them to death.
Miners use the cooled water to shower off the sweat built up from busting boulders in search of opals. All mines are now open cut and these are trawled with bulldozers, the men breaking open the large rocks with tools, hunting for the precious iridescent mineral known as boulder opal.
While opal at Coober Pedy and Lightning Ridge occurs in clay seams, this opal is attached to rock and has to be ground away from the boulder. See it for yourself on a self-drive tour of Deuce's Opal Mine and try your luck at fossicking. But please note the term boulder opal refers to the size of the host rock, rather than that of the opal.
The opal is put to many uses and the entire altar and font at St Finnbarr's Catholic Church are faced in the quartz-like mineral.
September sees the regular Kangaranga Do, a night of crazy events to welcome visitors on their way to the Birdsville Races, seven hour's drive away. There is a street party with a live band and any number of fun events including a wool bale-rolling contest. Join in the Wheelie Bin Wiggle and wind your way through a row of witches' hats.
Why should adults have all the fun? There are even junior-size wheelie bins for the youngsters. Most popular is the Rocks Off competition in which teams of four aim to be the first to throw up to 80 boulders out and then back into a small fenced pen. Two and a half minutes is all it takes, but fingers often get broken in the hectic race to win $1000.
It seems that there are rocks everywhere. Even the town is named after the stone-curlew, Quilpie being an Aboriginal word for this bird. All the other streets, bar one, are named after birds.
Local tours from the visitor centre take in the nearby opal mines and Grass Castles Art Gallery. Tours run with a minimum of two people. Visitors can also obtain bird booklets from the visitor centre to take on a self-guided walk along the well sign-posted new Bulloo River Walk
When the railway was diverted to what is now Quilpie, at the turn of the century, the population of Adavale plummeted from 3500 and is now just 12. As Quilpie was created, Avadale died as the entire community moved 96 kilometres south to Quilpie with its permanent water on the Bulloo River.
Look out for the Amy Johnson landing site on the western edge of Quilpie. The English aviator and the first woman to fly solo to Australia, landed on this spot in May, 1930, while flying from Darwin to Brisbane.
Quilpie is home to the sheep and cattle grazing country that Dame Mary Durack depicted in her 1959 history of the pastoralist family Kings in Grass Castles. Descendants of the Costellos and Tullys still live here.
According to one of the locals, the best thing about Quilpie is the "fair dinkum people that offer you a fair dinkum experience". Think about it as you eat a delicious Quilpie pie from the local bakery. For a longer-lasting taste of the Outback, stations such as Colac offer home-stay accommodation, while Ray Station caters for buses and groups.
Quilpie is on the sealed Warrego Highway, but it's advisable to check on weather and road conditions before driving to outlying areas and towns. Some roads may be partly sealed and 4WDs may be recommended.
For more details on Outback Queensland visit: www.queenslandholidays.com.au
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