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The Hard Way
Hot on the Trail (Cont.)

INNAMINCKA (population 14) is a forlorn cluster of ramshackle buildings beside Cooper's Creek—a gas station in the sand, a pub hidden in the middle of millions of acres of nowhere, a dusty airstrip used to transport oil and gas crews and the occasional mail pouch. It's the kind of grit-chafed, end-of-the-earth outpost that's so existential, a director might choose it for a movie set.

I book into the Burke Lodge Cabins, a set of three trailers left over from the 1985 film Burke & Wills. As the only guest, I'm given the director's trailer, which contains four small beds and a shower where a snake keeps poking his head through the drain.

The outback is one of the few places where it's possible to die if your car breaks down. If no one happens along in 48 hours, you're cooked.

"Out here, it's either drought or deluge," explains Joan Osborne. She's a landscape painter; her husband, John, is a retired aluminum-plant foreman. Together they're Innamincka's longest-lasting residents and unofficial mayors.

"Some years, the flies are so bad, your food is black if you try to eat outside," says Joan. "For a few years, we had a rabbit infestation. We had a stretch where it rained so much, Cooper's Creek was constantly flooding."

"This year, it's snakes," John tells me, his face tan as sand. "Eight-foot king brown bit a mate. Came through the ductwork and dropped onto his bed. Bite nearly killed him."

So why do they live here?

Joan sighs, disappointed that I haven't already figured this out for myself.

"It's so beautiful." Her eyes almost water. "There is nothing like the desert. Nothing in the whole world."

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