Off To The Races

A rural community embraces its diversity with a festival celebrating culture…and camels.

- Mandy McKeesick

CLOSE YOUR EYES for a moment and listen. There’s the hum of a didgeridoo, splutter of a chainsaw, acoustic twang of Creedence Clearwater Revival and the shrill call of a bagpipe. “They’re quick out of the barriers today,” a race-caller spruiks, and then there’s a low animal sound you can’t quite place. Now take note of the smells – definitely something animal, motorbike fumes, spicy curry, freshly baked bread.

Confused? Now open your eyes. You’re face to face with a woolly-headed camel as it gurgles and groans, a race-caller is chasing yabbies, someone is performing a haka and two mad motorcyclists are preparing to enter a steel-meshed Globe of Death.

You’ve found yourself at the Tara Festival of Culture and Camel Races.

It’s hard to arrive at one word to encapsulate this festival, which is held every two years in the rural town of Tara on the Western Downs of southern Queensland. Madcap springs to mind; eclectic comes close; kaleidoscopic, perhaps. But, while the senses and vocabulary are reeling, it’s fair to say it’s one hell of a show.

Country strong

Tara is renowned for agricultural and pastoral activities, particularly prime hard-wheat production. It has a population of little more than 2000, fewer than half of whom live in town. In the 1980s some of the area’s agricultural land was subdivided into small rural acreages, or lifestyle blocks, leading to an influx of new residents – although it was nothing compared with festival time, when the population soars to 16,000.