The Birdsville Hotel is a bucket-list item for many Australian travellers, who are drawn by its remote location and a history rich with outback stories.

“Every day you’ve got fresh people excited to have arrived at your pub,” the outback Queensland hotel’s manager, Ben Fullagar, said.

“They stop and take photographs out the front and tick it off their bucket list.

“That makes it a really good atmosphere every single day.”

The folklore around the remote pub, with its red-dust-coated floorboards and weathered sandstone walls, was enough to change the trajectory of Fullagar’s life about 15 years ago.

He was travelling around Australia after a stint in mining and stopped in at the hotel, which was built in 1884 on the red dirt in south-west Queensland about 1577 kilometres west of Brisbane, at the edge of the Simpson Desert.

“They needed a bit of a hand,” he said.

“I thought I’d pour beers for a couple of months, like a bucket-list thing.

“I didn’t even realise I was going to get paid, to be honest, and then I stayed.”

The pub looms large in the imaginations of many Australian outback travellers, including the thousands who make the pilgrimage to the remote outpost for the Birdsville Races every September.

Many outback travellers make the pilgrimage to the Birdsville Hotel. Photo: AAP

Workmates Albert Muhic and Craig McCall travelled to Birdsville from Broken Hill, stopping at bush pubs as they passed through Tibooburra and Cameron Corner, western NSW, Innamincka in South Australia, and Betoota in Queensland.

“It’s not so much about drinking at the pub, though it is iconic to say you’ve been to these places; it’s more about the people you meet,” Muhic said, as he sat in the Birdsville beer garden, shaded from the beating sun.

“They come from everywhere. They’re all like-minded and you always have a good night.”

McCall chimed in: “Plus there’s no TVs and no pokies.”

Part of the Birdsville watering hole’s allure is its rich colonial history, with tales of grand dances, wild weather and exhausted drovers stopping to take their rest in the early years of European settlement.

Newspapers across Australia reported on the mysterious appearance of a saddled, riderless horse in the pub’s yards in December 1929.

A search party was sent out to find its owner, a drover’s hand named Charles Corrie, who was asleep when his horse bolted.

After two days, Corrie was found lying under a tree and taken back to Birdsville to recover in hospital, “having given up all hope of being discovered”, Perth’s Sunday Times reported.

More recent history is captured in the well-worn Akubras, straw hats and baseball caps that hang in the pub in tribute to those who have left a lasting impression on Birdsville.

One belongs to a road train driver who brought food and supplies to Birdsville for years, another to a medic from the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Hanging your hat in the Birdsville Hotel is by invitation only, the honourees bonded by their deep commitment to the town of 110.

“You make real friends here, real connections because you live in a very raw, real lifestyle,” Fullagar said.

“Birdsville can spit you out if you’re not genuine and resilient.”

–AAP

This article was made possible with support from the Birdsville Race Club