In the barely perceptible depressions that make up the Channel Country, nature has come to life in abundance. Weeks of steady rain have flood the plains around the Cooper, stirring life from deep beneath the stony soil and transforming the landscape.
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Nature is putting on the greatest show on Earth, and it is not on the plains of the Serengeti but along the hundreds of kilometres of low floodplains between the Cooper and the Barcoo. It is literally in Queensland's backyard.
It starts with a trickle of brown water along parched creek beds that becomes a foaming, gurgling surge as more and more water invades the river systems. Native grasses suddenly come alive where weeks before there was nothing but rocky plain. Wildflowers in various hues of yellow, purple and white blanket miles of countryside.
This is a part of Queensland that sadly few see, and those who miss out are definitely the poorer for it. Outback tourism features poorly in our promotion of Queensland, which reflects an urban obsession with beaches and bikinis.
What we should be showing the world is life in Western Queensland.
While we lack lions, giraffe or elephants the native wildlife is every bit as spectacular as on the plains of Africa.
Brolga - exquisite in their immaculate showing of grey and pink - dance on the side of the highway outside Charleville. West of Quilpie a mother emu, all of six feet tall, bounces along the highway with her brood of young birds. And overhead a wedgetail eagle soars aloft, grasping a still-writhing snake in its talons.
But it is in the channels that fan the floodplains around Windorah that the show is at its best.
The red sand hills outside the town break through a vista dominated by emerald green fields of native sorghum. Continually changing with the wind and light, these vermillion hills glow in the midday sun, before brooding with a dark intensity in the late afternoon light.
Goannas, lizards, snakes and small marsupials inhabit this part of the country, while flocks of budgerigars and cockatoos are everywhere in the wet channels and surrounding plains.
The neglect of this part of Queensland's story verges on criminal incompetence. Only ignorance can provide an alternative explain why our tourism poobahs turn a blind eye to what nature has to display. Or is it the vested interest of hundreds of millions of dollars of high-raise construction on the coast?
It is easy to forget that the seeming hotspots of Queensland tourism, like the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Whitsundays, didn't become popular overnight. They were the product of massive advertising campaigns to lure tourists from the Southern states and overseas. There is no reason why a similar focus on Outback tourism should not bear fruit also, if only we are willing to try.
Even in the dry years, the landscape is stunning. The sunsets are brilliant too, if only as a prelude to deep, dark skies and an incandescent Milky Way.
Come on George Street; it's time to let the world know what we have to offer.
