Grey nomads are well used to paying ‘over the odds’ for fuel in more remote parts of the county, so travellers passing through Birdsville late last week were ‘gobsmacked’ to find bowser prices lower than they were in the cities.
Jenna Brook, the owner of the Birdsville Roadhouse – which sits on the edge of the Simpson Desert in Outback Queensland – says she hadn’t had a fuel delivery arrive since early January so it had been bought at lower prices.
She told the ABC she didn’t feel she could justify charging more.
“I haven’t put prices up yet because there’s still cheap fuel in the ground,” she said on Thursday. “Punters have been a little bit surprised — one even came in and made sure it wasn’t a mistake.”
The roadhouse was selling unleaded petrol for $1.94 per litre and diesel for $1.99 per litre when both fuels were well over $2 in most other parts of the country.
However, it may be too late to make a mad dash out to Birdsville for cheap fuel. A new delivery is expected and Ms Brook said prices ‘will definitely increase significantly’.
For grey nomads like Tom Johnson, that’s further worrying news … as he continues to assess how to counterbalance the impact on his budget,
“We will still travel as much, but to trim some of our costs we will stay in caravan parks less often, and do our grocery shopping in the larger towns,” he said. “In the past, we have always supported the country towns, pubs, bottle shops, cafes and grocers, but something has to give … unfortunately it will be the country towns.”
Denise Brown from the Outback Queensland Tourism Association says there is understandable concern about how smaller communities could be affected if travellers change their habits due to sky-high fuel prices.
“History does show that fuel prices haven’t impacted long-haul travellers, so that is a good sign, but we’ve never had anything like this,” she told the ABC. “It just means we’re working harder to tempt travellers out, to make sure they spend money in our regional towns to keep them afloat and booming.”
We live in the UK and were due to come over just before the boarders closed we are rescheduling it for July. We had hoped to buy a camper and go walkabout for a year and really explore rural OZ. We have travelled the perimeter well.
Unfortunately with everything soaring the whole trip will have to be cut down significantly to make our budget last as long as we can. We have already ruled out Birdsville Races and Wolf Crater which were 2 of our real must sees.
We love Australia and everything about it and either way can’t wait for our well overdue return visit. Greg Nomads is an invaluable site for news and info, thanks.