Download coordinates as: Birdsville is a rural town and locality in the Shire of Diamantina, Queensland, Australia.

Birdsville is located about 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) north-east of the Diamantina River in the Channel Country in the Lake Eyre drainage basin.

Distance and the lack of good access roads or a railway create prohibitively high transportation costs, so imported building materials are kept to a minimum.

Before Birdsville was established by British settlers, the whole region was inhabited by indigenous Australians, speakers of the Wangkangurru language (also known as Arabana/Wangkangurru, Wangganguru, Wanggangurru or Wongkangurru), whose home range stretched from Birdsville south towards Innamincka and Lake Eyre, including the modern local government areas of the Shire of Diamantina as well as the Outback Communities Authority of South Australia.

Brothers Hector and Norman Wilson formed "The Bluff" property around the present site of Birdsville in 1875 as an outpost of their massive Coongy station across the border in South Australia.

[10] Conflict in the region during this time included several large massacres of the resident Aboriginal people being perpetrated.

[27] A pastoralist on the nearby Warburton Creek reported to the Police Commissioner in Adelaide that 67 people were killed in these raids and that survivors from the violence had fled to his property.

[34][35] In the early 1880s the towns of Birdsville and Bedourie were established to service the newly taken up pastoral holdings of the Diamantina.

Reputedly, a merchant named Matthew Flynn, who carried stores for the stations, built a rough depot in the late 1870s at the site of the present town of Birdsville, then known as the Diamantina Crossing,[36] on the stock route from Boulia south to Adelaide.

[citation needed] When it was proclaimed, the town had three hotels, two stores, a customs house for interstate trade, a police station and a large collection of commercial buildings.

Birdsville is located at the border of South Australia and Queensland to collect tolls from the droves of cattle being moved interstate.

By 1889 the population of Birdsville was 110, and the town had 2 general stores, 3 hotels, a police station, school, 2 blacksmith shops, 2 bakers, a cordial manufacturer, bootmaker, saddler, auctioneer & commission agent, and a number of residences.

It had three hotels, a cordial factory, blacksmith store, market gardens, police and customs facilities but after Federation in 1901, the tolls were abolished and the town fell into decline to about 50 people throughout the 1950s.

[40] Tom Kruse operated the Birdsville Track mail run from 1936 to 1957, driving his Leyland Badger truck.

[41] He delivered mail and other supplies including general stores, fuel and medicine to remote stations from Marree in north-west South Australia to Birdsville, some 325 miles (523 kilometres) away.

[42] Each trip would take two weeks and Kruse regularly had to manage break-downs, flooding creeks and rivers, and getting bogged in desert dunes.

[42] In 2007, there was just one hotel serving canned or bottled beer, a library, a visitor information centre, a museum and a hospital.

[53] Water is extracted from bore drilled in 1961 on the Great Artesian Basin at 97 to 99 °C (207 to 210 °F) and is used to heat the operating fluid isopentane in a Rankine Cycle engine.

[64][65] In 2012, the billabong became home to a stray freshwater crocodile, which was subsequently removed and relocated by park ranger Don Rowlands.

The Big Red Bash is an annual three-day music festival held in July at a site 35 kilometres (22 mi) west of the town of Birdsville.