Channel Country blooms as floodwaters transform outback desert, stunning tourists

Behind the bar of the Betoota Hotel, Robert "Robbo" Haken is this year fielding a common question from tourists passing through on their way to Birdsville ."They can't see the desert because all the green is growing over the sand."Famously "red dirt country", Queensland's far west is instead a blanket of vivid green, the result of months-long flooding through the desert.

Earlier this year, ex-tropical cyclone Kirrily drenched the state's north, with water travelling hundreds of kilometres south to the Channel Country towards the Kati-Thanda Lake Eyre basin in South Australia.Birdsville, a town of 110 in the Channel Country — where the Northern Territory, Queensland and New South Wales borders meet — became an inland sea.ABC Western Queensland: Hannah WalshBig Red Tours owner Alex Oswald said tourists were "flabbergasted.

Pilot Jonathon Rae has the best view in Birdsville as he flies tourists over the flourishing country.Jonathan Rae is back for his second season as a pilot in Birdsville."All the dormant seedlings that lay underneath that cracked claypan just explode to life, so you get this abundance of colours, greenery, wildflowers shooting through.""You wouldn't believe that it was in the middle of the desert," Mr Rae said.

Desert Green Outback Wildflowers Tourism Flood Channel Country Rain Flowers Roads Cattle Agriculture Drought Cyclone Kirrily Lake Eyre Basin Highway

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