The town of Boulia is located on the Burke River, which was named by the explorers Burke and Wills on their journey through the area. Wills left his name on the Wills River that is located 14km upstream of town. A sign out of town invites tourist to fill their waterbags as Burke and Will once had in these very waterways. The town is heavily engrained with the pastoral industry that has supported it for over a hundred years. Large heads of sheep and cattle are still run on the properties of the district, earning in the order of $3-$4 million dollars annually. Tourists are now supplementing the districts income. They come to enjoy the rugged beauty of the landscape as well as the newly constructed Min Min Encounter. This $1.5 million dollar attraction introduces the local lands and the eerie phenomenon of the Min Min Lights that have been said to haunt travellers in the surrounding district. Boulia is where the bitumen stops on its journey south from the Isa and is truly in the heart of the outback. The local water is supplied from bores that have been sunk into the artesian basin and this water has allowed the town to become a green oasis in the often dry landscape. Some find the distances needed to be travelled as too much of a hurdle to visit, but many more find that it is this isolation that has allowed Boulia to retain its outback charm.

Boulia is located on the edge of a desert and summer time temperatures regularly sore into the forties, with little relief from the heat during the night. The 250mm of annual rainfall is associated with the summer monsoon from November to March and the high humidity and high temperatures can make life in the area a tad sticky. The short winter brings beautiful cool and dry weather, with daytime temperatures remaining in the mid to low twenties.

The Explorers Burke and Wills are the most notable explorers to have come through Boulia. On the 1860-1861 ill-fated transcontinental expeditions to the Gulf of Carpentaria, Burke and Wills's party stopped and filled their water bottles in two of the Towns Rivers, naming then the Burke River and the Wills River. The Botanist Wills, commented that "We hobbled the horses out no vegetation equal to anything in Australia, other than country of volcanic origin."

After 1876, W. Hodghinson explored the area between the Diamantina River and the Arunta Desert. He blazed a tree beside a water hole south of the two sisters, to mark his most northern survey point. This tree is still standing from 1884. The land the town was built on was gazetted on the 2nd of August 1879 after being reclaimed from the Bulla Bulla 2 and 4 holdings. The land was surveyed and a land sale was held on the 13th of February 1883. The early settles sank bores and built the town's infrastructure against the enormous logistical challengers associated with the isolation.

For more information visit the Boulia Shire Council website.

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Queensland Holidays