Brendan Farrell is eating a lamington.
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It’s rather quintessential given the date but there is little of the usual trappings associated with Australia Day on show at Quilpie racecourse on Friday.
Sure there are flags everywhere, people are enjoying a few beers and the local bakery has served up sausage rolls, pies and watermelon for lunch (oh, and lamingtons of course).
But there is no backyard barbecue feel to this Australia Day occasion.
Bumpa is hot and caked with dirt (and tired one can only presume) dressed in his typical uniform of Burrumbuttock Hay Runners shirt, shorts, sock savers and boots.
He hasn’t stopped since before dawn and indeed it’s pretty evident he hasn’t stopped much at all in the past few months.
His eyes are bloodshot from the dust and he’s relentlessly on the go, barking orders and scanning the landscape for the “one-percenters” – the little unsung jobs that can make or break a massive operation such as this.
All around him sheltering under the sweltering racecourse verandah is a sea of similarly tired, dirty and sweaty hay runners and their dedicated support crew.
A few good men remain out on the course in the baking heat to unload and re-load trucks to ensure hay is allocated fairly and squarely for Saturday’s on-farm deliveries to about 230 farmers in the district.
It is hot; relentlessly hot.
Later, much later at the local bowls club – where the air conditioning is struggling under the mass of bodies that have converged on its humble premises – it’s still stiflingly hot.
The town has put on a spread for the Burrumbuttock Hay Runners and there is a quietly casual feel to the evening where more generous volunteers dish up wholesome fare – sausages, minute steaks, coleslaw, potato salad, corn – and plenty of it.
It’s been another long day; not for one moment should anyone consider the hay run a lark, a joyride or anything other than an exhausting mission of mercy.
You have to experience a hay run to truly appreciate the scale of Bumpa’s dream.
This, the 14th hay run, has seen more than 500 volunteers and 180 trucks carting 6500 bales of hay to make a difference to Aussie farmers in need.
Bumpa jokes that the circus has come to town.
And in a way it has – the cavalcade of rigs rolled into Quilpie with lights flashing and horns blasting while townsfolk cheered and waved them on.
The convoy is an awesome sight to behold; even bunched fairly tightly, 180 trucks can take up about 55 kilometres of bitumen.
The hay runners’ arrival is absolutely cause for celebration.
But underlying the fanfare is a brutal truth – the country here is buggered.
From Cobar to Cunnamulla and on that final stretch into Quilpie, the landscape is desolate.
It’s a miracle anything survives here.
Pete Warren, from Cunnamulla, informs us over the two-way the scattered mulga trees are about the only thing left to reliably feed stock.
Although, he adds on the crackly line, there is a “bit of a hoo-ha” in Queensland at the moment over laws in relation to clearing the hardy tree.
Hay runner stalwart Howie Muller estimates there must be close to $2 million in hay, dog food and toys loaded on trailers for this run.
It’s a drop in the ocean to what’s needed out here but that’s not the point.
Howie warns me drop-off day is an emotion-charged one.
And even though it’s rare for theses families to really let on just how tough things are, the truck drivers who return from farm visits say their lives are never quite the same.
It’s what keeps them returning year after year and it’s what drives the feisty Farrell to “keep the dream alive”.
His dream is of an Australia that cares about the people who put food on our tables.
His dream is that politicians will turn their gaze towards the resilient and resourceful families who continue to try to eke out a living from this unforgiving land.
Rain is the only real answer to this problem of crippling drought.
But answering the call to our humanity is something that we all can do right here and right now.
This is the dream the hay runners keep alive this Australia Day.
