Outback Heroines

by Sue Williams

  If you’d told the then Jo Laurie when she was growing up that she’d one day become a modern champion of Outback Australia, she would have laughed in your face. Nothing could have been further from her mind. Born in Newcastle in New South Wales, north of Sydney, she had an idyllic childhood on her parents’ cattle farm just west of nearby Gloucester, with her third-generation cattleman dad, Cliff, her mum, Marie, the daughter of a dairy farmer who’d become a nurse, and her two younger brothers, James and Ted.

  ‘I spent all my time barefoot, riding horses, playing with my brothers, who were my best friends, and enjoying the different seasons,’ she says. ‘It was a simple upbringing, we were very happy.’

  Boarding school in Sydney at the age of 10 was a rude awakening. She absolutely hated it, but realised early on that it was a rite of passage and that she’d just have to grit her teeth and bear it. She missed her family, her friends, the cattle dog Jack, her favourite cow, Petunia, and her horse, Lizard, terribly, and she detested having to wear shoes, share a dorm with eight other girls, and live with all the noises and smells of a big city. But she coped, and six months after the end of school, she returned to the city to follow in her mother’s footsteps by training to become a nurse.

  ‘It never occurred to me to do anything else,’ she says. ‘But I was very independent and always knew that, some day, I’d do something different. I knew I never wanted to marry the man next door, live on his bit of dirt and have kids. I didn’t know what I’d do, but I knew I’d eventually do something different.’

  After finishing her training, Jo worked at St Luke’s for a while in Sydney’s Kings Cross, now loving the buzz of the big city, then went off to backpack around the world. On her return to Australia early in 1982, however, she felt lost. She knew she liked nursing, but all her old mates were settling down and getting married or becoming immersed in their careers, and she was restless and felt she no longer fitted in.

  At that point, an aunt suggested she join the Reverend John Flynn’s Australian Inland Mission to have a go at nursing in the Outback. The idea appealed to her. The newspapers at that time were full of debate about Lindy Chamberlain, whose baby Azaria had gone missing two years before at Ayers Rock and who was being tried – quite wrongly, as it later turned out – for her murder, and Jo’s interest was piqued at the thought of Australia’s vast interior. By the next afternoon, she’d had a 30-minute interview and been offered a job in Birdsville, pretty much the most isolated major town in the Outback.

  Birdsville, population 110, stands on the edge of the vast Simpson Desert, remote and alone, and incredibly proud to have survived the 131 years since its birth as Diamantina Crossing. It’s never been easy. Just under 1600 kilometres from Brisbane, and a touch over 1200 kilometres from Adelaide, the town relies on fortnightly road train deliveries of supplies, with its post brought in by the world’s longest mail run. It’s also well known for the severity of its weather conditions. In summer the temperature can easily top 45 degrees Celsius and plunge down to below 4 degrees on winter nights, while major dust storms can cut visibility to almost nothing in seconds. Seasonal heavy rainfall means the nearby Diamantina River bursts its banks every three to five years, and floods can cut off the town from the outside world for weeks.

  Jo arrived in Birdsville shortly before Christmas 1982 and warmed to it immediately. Something about the smells of the place, the fresh air and the warm breezes reminded her of her happy childhood in the country. She also loved living at the old hospital, with the Aboriginal ward on one side, the chapel on the other, and the meeting room for the town behind. She took to both the community and her work with enthusiasm.

  ‘I felt I was on the frontier of Australia,’ she says. ‘It appealed to my sense of adventure. The role of nurse there was very broad. It involved everything from preventative medicine and giving tetanus shots to clinic runs, counselling, visiting stations, rounding up goats on an airfield, loading and unloading aircraft, organising the hospital fete and teaching at Sunday school – the one thing I never did!’

  There were also some welcome surprises. One of the first people Jo met in Birdsville was Nell Brook, the South African born wife of David Brook, who owns three massive cattle stations in the Channel Country. The two women liked each other immediately and struck up a firm friendship. One evening, Nell invited her for dinner, along with Adelaide builder Kym Fort. The Birdsville Hotel had burnt down three years earlier as a result of an electrical fault, the day after entrepreneur Dick Smith had signed a contract to buy it. When that contract was later voided by the owner in light of the disaster, Kym had become part of a consortium to buy the historic old pub. David Brook, who’d lived all his life in Birdsville, and dearly wanted a nice place to drink, to have a good restaurant meal and to take any guests, joined in as a partner.

  For Jo, that evening was a major turning point in her life. Sitting opposite Kym at the dinner table, it was attraction at first sight. They’ve been together ever since. ‘We just shared the same values, and he was a real visionary, a quiet achiever,’ Jo says. ‘We were soul mates from that moment we met.’

  After Jo’s contract with the Mission, which had become Frontier Services, ended, she moved back to Adelaide for a while, to nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and then in the Flinders Medical Centre. She also began to study complementary therapies, like aromatherapy, and dabbled in a little beauty therapy.

  Yet by this point, the Outback had seeped into her blood. ‘The horizon is never as big as when you’re in the Outback,’ she says. ‘And the dirt and dust will get into every crevice. Sometimes it can be so harsh, it can destroy people. There are the extremes of temperature, and climate and environment. It’ll get you if you’re not well prepared. But it’s always a real community out there. You get to share the joys and the sorrows of people.’

  When she made the decision to return to Birdsville in 1995 to work as a local nurse, she began trying out complementary treatments on her patients. She recognised that stress can often be a contributing factor to illness and that massage, aromatherapy and simply taking the time to listen, could lessen the need for medication. Gradually word spread, she managed to win people’s trust and her popularity soared.

  ‘We have a lot of nurses pass through Birdsville, but Jo was different, she was special,’ says Nell Brook. ‘As well as the nurse, she became the community’s counsellor – someone always willing to listen, always happy to help. She was very level-headed and cared about everyone here, was very supportive and had lots of empathy, which really endeared her to the community. I felt very lucky to have her as a friend as she was always there for me too, either at joyous occasions or whenever there was anything traumatic happening.’

  Jo was working so hard, however, having to see so many patients and cope with so many emergencies on her own, she was starting to feel as if she was running on empty. Without a doctor in town, the pressure was always on to do more for patients than she was legally allowed, instead of waiting for the arrival of the Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS).

  One night in 2000, she spent hours dealing with the aftermath of a terrible road accident and, by the time the RFDS had left with the injured patients, she was absolutely exhausted. Dutifully, she tried to ignore the smell of injured bodies that still lingered in the surgery and set out to clean it from end to end. As she wiped up the blood and scrubbed the surfaces clean, she felt more and more weary. ‘At the end of it, I looked out of the surgery window at Birdsville,’ she says. ‘There was no one around and the place was still and I just thought, I can’t do this any more! This is it. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I didn’t want to nurse any more.’

  By this stage, Kym had done an enormous amount of work on the Birdsville Hotel, had fixed up the main bar, built a dining room in the pub, and had added on motel units to accommodate visitors to the town. Co-owner David was also fully occupied, setting up the local organic beef venture OBE together with other cattle farmers in the region, and ha
ving cattle at their stations registered as organic. David and Kym, in addition, had in 1999 bought another hotel together, the Innamincka Hotel close to the South Australian border with Queensland, a popular haunt for both Outback locals and tourists arriving to visit the Dig Tree, the start and end point for the Burke and Wills expedition, just 80 kilometres away. Kym immediately started work building accommodation and a new dining room for that, too.

  So, with Kym and David otherwise engaged, and the Birdsville Hotel getting busier and busier, Jo made the plunge into a whole new career, and joined the staff. She started out on the bottom rung, determined to learn the business from the ground up, and did every­thing from housekeeping to serving in the restaurant and washing the dishes afterwards. Steadily, she rose through the ranks. In the mornings, she’d cook breakfast for 50, then go work in the front office, plan and reorder the stores, oversee any staffing issues and make sure everything was up to scratch. She ran the hotel, in short, like a busy surgical ward.

  Jo Fort behind the bar of the Birdsville Hotel.

  ‘She was amazing,’ says Lisa Pearson, who runs her own event and marketing business but who went up to work there for a few years. ‘She’s such a pocket rocket and is so driven. She’s very diminutive in stature, but she makes up for it in passion and enthusiasm. You get such a strange mix of people who go to Birdsville, but somehow she managed to pull them all together as a team.’

  At that point, 4WDs were becoming more popular, and the number of tourists driving up the Birdsville Track was increasing all the time. Many of the visitors fell in love with the remodelled Birdsville Hotel, with parts of its original 1884 structure, built of creamy sandstone from a quarry 16 kilometres away, still standing after a devastating cyclone in 1905, a fire in 1964 and then the most recent fire in 1979. The rebuilt main bar, with its historical memorabilia over the walls and hanging from the ceiling, still retained something of its old Outback charm, while the lounge bar – named the Green Lizard Bar after a beer shortage in the 1970s meant that the only drink available in town for a time was crème de menthe – proved a popularly roomy addition. Tourists started staying for longer and longer stretches.

  Running the hotel, however, was never easy. Supplies had to be ordered carefully to take into account unexpected parties of people arriving by road or by air, who would eat and frequently drink the place out of house and home. If anything ran out, it could be another two weeks before fresh supplies would arrive. If it rained, suddenly there was another huge headache: supplies might be held up for weeks. Menus would have to be hastily rewritten, substitute ingredients used for favourite dishes and everything juggled to make sure the quality of meals would remain up to par. Soon, Jo found herself working 18-hour days. She’d start at the crack of dawn and finish at midnight, grabbing an hour in the afternoon to nip home and lie down. ‘It was exhausting!’ she says. ‘You’re meeting new people all the time, welcoming them because you want them to feel at home immediately, and then making sure everything is done right for them. I think, at that stage, I was pretty much wearing out!’

  One afternoon, Jo walked out into the desert and sat on the top of a sand dune just out of town. ‘I sat with silence around me, and thought about what was happening in my life,’ she says. ‘I realised at that point I was running myself ragged. I needed to get away and find myself again. I loved the Outback, but I wasn’t getting the chance to enjoy it; I was too busy making sure others were having a good time there. I loved running an Outback pub, but it can gobble up all of your energy and time. I needed to get my life back. I was totally burnt out. I was at another crossroads in my life.’

  In August 2006, Jo, Kym, Nell and David met to discuss their futures. Jo made it clear she’d had enough, so the four agreed to hire a new manager and put the Birdsville Hotel up for sale. All four were terribly sad at the decision, but felt it was the right thing to do. So, in December 2006, the Birdsville Hotel went on the market, and the whole town held its collective breath, fearing for the future of one of Australia’s best-loved pubs, and dreading that a proud Outback icon might be lost forever.

  (Photo courtesy of Tourism and Events Queensland)

  In the end, the hotel didn’t sell. ‘I guess in hindsight, it wouldn’t have been the right time to sell,’ says Jo. ‘I don’t think any of us really wanted to sell. But it was an interesting exercise. It made us all think carefully about its future, and what we wanted to do.’

  For Jo, that meant taking some time out. She went back to Adelaide to the home she and Kym owned there, sat on the beach, and read Harry Potter books. When she’d finally recovered her equilibrium, she took back part of the running of the Birdsville and Innamincka hotels, moving the administration of both to an office in that Adelaide home. ‘Even from that distance, she managed to lift the hotels to another level,’ says Nell. ‘She’s very focused and a very hard worker, and she was also a great manager of staff, very professional, and she managed to introduce a very high level of service, food and accommodation, so every visitor felt welcome.’

  Current Birdsville Hotel manager Kate McDonald adapted quickly and smoothly, but says it was wonderful having Jo just a phone call away. ‘She’s an incredible boss, the best, and we developed a very good working relationship,’ Kate says. ‘Because she’s done every job that she’s ever asked someone else to do, she knows exactly what’s going on, and when things are crazy it’s great to hear her calm voice on the phone. She’s a lot of fun, too, and while she works ridiculously hard and is an inspiration in the way she does things, she’s so enthusiastic and high-spirited, everyone warms to her.’

  Away from the day-to-day running of the hotels, it was easier for Jo to see the business as a whole. Years before, David Brook had talked about the need to introduce some travel itineraries to allow tourists to get the most out of their trip to the area, and Kym’s son Brett had come up with the name ‘The Outback Loop’. Jo now revisited the idea. The Loop could easily include both the Birdsville and Strzelecki tracks as well as the two hotels. She seized on the concept with all her old gusto, energy and enthusiasm.

  The idea of The Outback Loop became Jo’s new passion. It made perfect sense to her. From the old railway town of Lyndhurst, now little more than a ghost town at the crossroads of the Strzelecki and Oodnadatta tracks, tourists could drive north to Marree up the western side of The Loop and then start on the Birdsville Track to travel the 517 kilometres up across the Tirari Desert and the Sturt Stony Desert past Clayton, Dulkaninna, Etadunna, Mungerannie, Clifton Hills and Pandie Pandie to Birdsville. They’d spend two or three nights there, then drive east along the Birdsville developmental road before turning south onto the Cordillo Road along the eastern side of The Loop. After the Cadelga Ruins and Cordillo Downs Station, with its heritage-listed 1883 woolshed, they’d then arrive at the Innamincka Hotel for a few nights to explore the town and venture out to the Dig Tree, where Burke and Wills began, and finished, their ill-starred expedition. From Innamincka, the Strzelecki Track begins its 466-kilometre journey south past the Moomba gas field, Merty Merty, the Montecollina Bore wetlands, with its series of dams, and the Blanchewater Ruin, before finishing at Lyndhurst.

  Travelling the 1500-kilometre Outback Loop in either direction would mean following the former route of drovers riding the lonely, historic stock tracks, walking cattle from the Channel Country to the markets in the south, building the foundations of the Australian beef industry that is today one of the best in the world. ‘The idea of The Outback Loop is basically all about the two pubs and the story of the old stock routes, the region’s arid beauty and the pioneering lifestyle of those who lived, and continue to live, here,’ says Jo. ‘It was a great idea. I really believed in this project. I’ve never been able to do anything 50 per cent, it always has to be 150 per cent. So I threw myself into this, to the point where I could talk of virtually nothing else. It’s about creating a sustainable business and a recognisable brand in the Outback. And if you don’t do something with all the energy a
nd passion you can muster, then it doesn’t happen. I was determined this would get off the ground.’

  After months and months of work branding the concept with the help of brand strategist, designer and photographer Karen Brook, one of David and Nell’s daughters, talking to tourism authorities, having its elements accredited and putting all the marketing in place, Jo finally officially launched The Outback Loop in 2008. It was an instant hit. Tourists planning to drive to Birdsville decided to take extra time out to complete The Loop so they could explore both tracks, and stayed on at both pubs for what often turned out to be the Outback experience of a lifetime.

  ‘We tell visitors to allow seven to 10 days to travel it, including a couple of days to soak up the Outback hospitality and spirit at the hotels,’ says Jo, now 54 years old, and dividing her time evenly between Adelaide, Birdsville and Innamincka. ‘It’s a fantastic trip. I think the heritage, the history and the experience of staying in both pubs always makes people want to stay in the Outback longer.’

  Yet, like anything in such an isolated corner of Australia, it hasn’t always been easy. The devastating floods of 2010 and 2011 saw both Birdsville and Innamincka cut off for long periods of time, effectively keeping large sections of the Loop underwater. Jo always refused to give up, however, determinedly keeping the hotels in both places open for everyone. One day she flew two of the staff who’d been on holiday back to Innamincka, along with all the supplies that couldn’t get in by road, to make sure the hotel could keep on serving meals. ‘There was an incredible thunderstorm and we were flying right through it,’ says Michelle Hoffman, the manager of the Innamincka Hotel at the time. ‘Jo didn’t show any nerves at all. Then when we landed, we loaded all the supplies into a dinghy and paddled across the water to get to the hotel. She never gives up, and she’s always so positive; she battles through all the problems. She’s an inspiration.’