Boulia, Queensland – Fossils, Yabbies and the Min Min Lights

We travelled north through more long flat straight roads through the town of Bedourie, home of the Bedourie camp oven, and on to Boulia.

The drive was pretty spectacular. So flat that you could see big fluffy white clouds that seemed to go on forever in every direction. This is what’s known as the Chanel County, as the river water and rains from the Gulf of Carpentaria flow down in channels through the country side, creating amazing pockets of green shrubbery and grasses in the red earth.

Are the kids appreciating this as much as we are? Who knows, I suspect not!

We arrived in Boulia at the local caravan park whose owners took great pride in running 24/7 sprinklers to water their grass. The whole area is in an artesian bore, so no shortage of water, despite being in the desert. The contrast in the welcome between here and Birdsville couldn’t be greater as the park owner handed over a typed copy of all the things to see & do in Boulia, the opening hours and phone numbers of all the places, just in case we wanted to go somewhere and it was closed! She also said the kids were welcome to play in the sprinklers, which she may have regretted later as it turned into all out sprinkler warfare!

I think after all the dust we were happy to chill out with grass and oddly so many less flies, so we ended up staying in Boulia for a couple of nights. Boulia’s claim to fame is the “Min Min Encounter” which I won’t even attempt to explain, but about 20 years ago some passionate locals put a lot of love and effort into creating a rather unique 45 minute theatrical experience that was kind of good but kind of creepy at the same time. Included in our ticket was the upgrade to the local museum which housed ancient marine fossils found locally as the whole area was once under the sea which was pretty cool. Particularly as they were housed in an air conditioned shed and accompanied by endless boxes of taped up rocks potentially containing more fossils, only the local guy who had uncovered all of these had passed away of old age before he got to the rest. Maybe someday someone will get to these and put Boulia on the map!

That was it for Boulia’s tourist attractions, so we spent the afternoon at the local pool, thank goodness there was one and cooled off.

Our new neighbours Ian & Celine had been catching the biggest yabbies I’d ever seen in the Burke River running alongside the campground. The kids latched on to this pretty quickly and scored themselves some yabbie pots & managed to haul in a few beauties! Pretty amazing as the last thing we were expecting to eat in the outback was fresh shellfish!