The Royal Hotel in Birdsville, Australia

The Royal Hotel in Birdsville, Australia built in 1883. A true Aussie icon and an authentic outback experience awaiting those who brave the often unpredictable Birdsville track in far western Queensland. It ran as a Hotel for 40 yrs before being converted to the Inland Mission Hospital.Abandoned Royal Hotel in Birdsville Queensland Australia, this old sandstone and brick hotel has suffered from vandals and souvenir hunters.

It is so far from the coast, and so intensely isolated, that Birdsville has become a byword for the Australian outback. It is a tiny township - really nothing more than a village - on the edge of the Simpson Desert on a road which effectively goes nowhere - apart from into the desert. Birdsville sits on the edge of the Simpson Desert and operates like some kind of mysterious magnet to people who want to go to the most isolated place on the continent. The current fascination with isolated places has meant that a regular stream of 4WD adventurers, all determined to travel the 500 km of the Birdsville track, pass through the town. This has been complemented by the Birdsville Races which attract over 8,000 people to the town for the two-day race meeting.

Located in Adelaide Street, the Royal Hotel was erected around 1883 and is an important link to the early development of the pastoral industry in Western Queensland. The Queensland Heritage Register notes: "The earliest section of the Royal Hotel is likely to have been constructed in 1883, as the first license for this hotel was issued to Alfred William Tucker in that year. In 1885 Tucker transferred the license to Johann H Groth, and on the official survey plan of 1885, the building is marked as Groth's hotel. On 25 January 1886, Groth secured his holding by the purchase of the allotment on which the hotel was located, for £260, and the unimproved allotment adjoining this to the south, for £10. Each block comprised 2 roods. Title to both blocks passed from Groth in 1898, but the building continued to function as a hotel under several proprietors and licensees until the early 1920s. Mrs Alice Maude Scott was the licensee and later owner from c. 1908 until at least 1920, when title passed to Harry Afford, station manager of Birdsville." From 1923-1937 it was the AIM Hospital.

The Australian Inland Mission Hospital was established in the town in 1923. It was the first AIM Hospital in Queensland. At the time the AIM Hospital occupied a rough stone building which had been constructed in 1882 as the Royal Hotel, one of the town's first two pubs. It was bought by the AIM in 1923 and used as a hospital base for the Royal Flying Doctor. It was from this building that Birdsville's first pedal wireless broadcast occurred in 1929. The original building was replaced by a purpose-built, pre-fabricated hospital opened in 1937 on land purchased by the Presbyterian Church.

Located at the eastern end of the main street of Birdsville, Adelaide Street, the former Australian Inland Mission Hospital site comprises the hospital building, former Aboriginal ward, 'billiard room', water tanks, shed and new padre cottage. Of these, the hospital building, former Aboriginal ward and above-ground corrugated iron tank and the in-ground concrete water tank are significant.

The north-west facing hospital building is a rectangular structure with a gabled hip roof and is surrounded on three sides by enclosed verandahs. It is constructed on a steel frame with corrugated iron external walls, ripple iron verandah linings, Oregon pine joists and rafters, masonite and tilux internal walls, and caneite ceilings. The foundations and floors are concrete, with linoleum covering most internal floors.

The hospital was designed especially for the inland. Ceilings are well insulated and low to afford maximum space between the ceiling and the iron roof, while air vents in the gables provide roof ventilation. Verandah ceilings have a gap at the eaves to permit air flow. The building is equipped with a cool storage cellar under the kitchen, an underground tank for rain (drinking) water and an above-ground tank for town water, which was previously drawn from the Diamantina River and now from an artesian bore.

The former Royal Hotel at Birdsville, erected c. 1883, survives as an important link with the earliest pastoral settlement in the Diamantina district of far western Queensland. As the Australian Inland Mission's Nursing Home from 1923 to 1937, it has national significance as the first in a string of such bush hospitals in central Australia.

As of today, it sits as a tourist attraction in a town of fewer than 200 people.