Birdsville

Exceptional.

Pretty much from the Birdsville track all the way through to Mount Gambier.

The feed, it's just a fantastic feed season.

And there's some really big crops.

When life gets difficult, you often draw on lessons you learned long before you realised you'd even need them.

For Karen Brook, those lessons began in Birdsville, watching her parents build a business and a community pull together through droughts and floods.

Now a Gold Coast-based entrepreneur, pilot and mentor, her journey has included working internationally with the late personal development teacher, Bob Proctor.

I know she's going to have a lot there to share with us tonight.

Karen, what did growing up in Birdsville teach you about handling life when things didn't go right to plan?

Yeah, look, the first thing that comes to my mind about that is resilience, you know, thick skin.

Being tough, I guess, we would run around barefoot, you know, on the rocks and the dirt and play outside.

But, you know, we watched the floods and the droughts and cattle die and we also saw it come alive when it and there was water and the birds.

That's right.

Yes, prior to the Birdsville races.

Yeah.

Traffic the night before is travelling through.

So Barkoo Shires, we... boundaries at Haddon's Corner with South Australia.

Yeah.

So if you go from, say, Charleville, Quilpie, Windora, and then you're on your way out of town and you will either go to Badoori or Birdsville.

Ah, the Birdsville Track.

I mean, like these are iconic Australian bands.

And when you look at the lineup, the lineup to go out into the remote places like Birdsville and, you know, and OK, Broken Hill may not be as remote, but certainly it's a mirror event when you are there and it's still out back.

um it's certainly a great experience just for the artists that's why they that's why they attract big names because the artists actually get as much kick out of playing there as uh as the people there that are attending and then it's this the one thing with with these events and and this is where uh greg his family you know with um his wife raylene his daughter laura who we're going to speak to in a second and son stephen They have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for very worthwhile causes.

The Royal Flying Doctors, Beyond Blue, just to name a couple.

They have raised so much money.

The money that...

I would love to know the figure of what it has done to the outback Queensland economy, the regional towns and places that people travel through to get to Birdsville.

The same with Broken Hill.