“All I can put it down to is the people running the rodeo are trying to run an American rodeo instead of an Australian rodeo.

“The Mardi Gras is 100 per cent Australian and it’s for the people of Mount Isa,” Brophy said. 

“This is not America. This is Australia,” he said, noting the obvious. “And Australian people like it the Australian way.” 

He also criticised the position where his tent was installed last year during the rodeo, during which there became an entry fee to enter sideshow alley.  

Brophy’s boxing tent will not be formally part of the Mount Isa Rotary Rodeo. Instead he increases the number of shows to be held behind the Isa Hotel in the central business district. 

The only time it will be based at Buchanan Park this year is during the Mailman Express Races, where it will be installed for the Thursday night before the official rodeo. During the rodeo Brophy returns to the CBD. 

Brophy supported all moves to centralise the festivities so that it benefited local businesses, like in the days of old before the rodeo itself was moved from the more distant Kalkadoon Park to Buchanan. He supported the concept of the Isa Street Festival on the Wednesday night. 

“There’s no atmosphere in town because it’s not an Australian rodeo anymore,” Brophy said. 

“In the old days you couldn’t fit into a hotel during that week.

“Since they moved the grounds from Kalkadoon Park and moved it into town (at Buchanan Park) it’s fading away. In the old days the aboriginals used to come and everyone camped out there.” 

The Isa Street festival was organised by the Mount Isa City Council, which agreed to take on the Mardi Gras on Wednesday after the rodeo committee announced it would be cancelled from the regular program on the Friday night. 

Size of floats would be restricted.

Brophy said the Mardi Gras was just as important as the rodeo for Mount Isa. Tourists from the coast expected to see it as part of the rodeo entertainment, he said.