DRIVING across the vast landscapes of the Barkly Tablelands region to the west of Mount Isa on your way to the Northern Territory is an education in the expansiveness of our great country.
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Armed with the knowledge that hardened Australian drovers used to travel this land with wandering mobs of cattle to get them to market is even more outstanding.
History can be stale – locked behind museum cabinets and told only through the words written on displays and plaques – but this weekend the bush town of Camooweal will come alive with the sounds, voices and stories of living drovers.
The Camooweal Drover’s Festival is held every year in August and brings together the best of droving history to re-educate a new generation about the lives once lived in outback Queensland.
The sprint to the border is no more than a two-hour drive and the caravan of tourists and old souls that awaits you at the Post Office Hotel and Drovers Camp is well worth the trip.
The festivities start tomorrow night with a traditional bush dance in the community hall and the famed Last Great Mail Run – a novelty event calling on teams of five to make a horse and cart, pick up a passenger at the BP Truck Stop, stop in at the post office to get the mail, have a drink at the pub and find the old drover heading to the station to which their parcels and envelopes are addressed.
Camooweal Drovers Camp treasurer and secretary Ellen Finlay said the winning team would win $1000 to give to a charity of their choice and it was free to enter.
The runner-up also picks up $500 to give to their charity of choice and – better yet – will get some actual face time with an old-time drover at the pub.
Mrs Finlay said this special yarning time between the young and old was what made the weekend such a magical experience.
‘‘The young generation have no idea of how these old guys lived in that time,” she said.
“The hardships they went through droving cattle and the nights they sat up to watch the stock are all the yarns they can tell on the day.”
Authentic droving skills are still practised in the arena at the Drover’s Camp, where most of the festival’s events are held over the weekend.
Bronco branding involves a group of drovers working in co-ordination to separate, rope and brand a beast.
A rider musters the mob of cattle in the arena and swoops in to rope a “cleanskin”, or unbranded beast.
It is roped up against a gate where two more drovers rope its legs and bring it down before branding it with a brand dipped in coloured paint.
At last year’s festival many teams were made up of men aged well into their 60s who took amusement in seeing their long years of hot, dusty, tough-as-nails cattle work transformed into a “sport”.
The young drovers are starting to catch on and many believe this revival is paramount to the ongoing popularity of a sport at risk of dying away like so many other droving techniques.
The smell of finely wound leather whips is characteristic of this gathering too and the art form of whip cracking is still an integral part of the charm and history of the area.
Leather workers are pedantic about their products; almost as particular as the whip crackers who give performances for the crowds that gather at the grounds.
It wouldn’t be a country event without some great country tunes either.
Mrs Finlay said the award-winning Lindsey Waddington Band would perform at the Camooweal country hall dance tomorrow night and Golden Guitar winner Norma O’Hara-Murphy and Tommy Maxwell would grace the festival’s main stage on Saturday.
A talent quest for budding musicians, bush poets and storytellers will also uncover some diamonds in the rough.
Historic camp food, comprehensive and historic displays, market stalls and livestock events will all be on show in Camooweal from tomorrow until Sunday. For accommodation options and entry fees, contact the Camooweal Drovers Camp Association.
