Talking goal-setting and ultramarathons with the Birdsville Roadhouse’s Jenna Brook

On my second visit, we drove across the vast open country south of Boulia for the Outback Queensland Masters golf competition. The brand new Birdsville Dunes Golf Course was hosting the final leg of the competition and the famous Million Dollar Hole-In-One competition.

Everything seemed much the same as it had been on my first visit, and the camping ground was packed with every sort of off-road caravan and dusty 4WD you can imagine.

Located on the Queensland–New South Wales border, 1600 kilometres west of Brisbane and 1200 kilometres north of Adelaide, Birdsville is the gateway to the Simpson Desert. It is on the Diamantina River, which flows into Lake Eyre and is in the heart of the rich Channel Country. 

The Brook family has been in the area since the late 1800s, with a cattle empire of 3.5 million hectares, producing organic beef in northern South Australia and south-west Queensland. Jenna Brook returned to her Birdsville family in 2011 after university and overseas travel, planning to stay for a month. Twelve years later, she’s still there.

At 35, Jenna owns the Birdsville Roadhouse, has contracts for the post office, Rex airline baggage handling and the container recycling depot, and is the treasurer of the famous Birdsville Race Club. With a passion to share the desert experience, Jenna created and is Race Director of the Simpson Desert Ultra; an event that tests the limits of endurance of runners over 25, 50, 75 or 100 kilometres.

The morning I meet Jenna, Birdsville is a hive of activity, and the town’s busiest place is the Birdsville Roadhouse. While 4WDs, bikes and caravans lined up for food and fuel, a couple of blokes were playing an old upright piano to entertain the visitors.

Says Jenna, “We are the first faces people see when they come to Birdsville. So we need to make it a positive experience. We ensure they feel welcome and know that we’re grateful to have them here.”

How do you get staff? Most places in Queensland are incredibly short-staffed at the moment because of COVID-19 and the shortage of backpackers.
Yeah, recruiting staff does present its challenges. I have been fortunate to recruit a team during the pandemic and over the last six months. Many have returned because they have had a good experience working here.

I don’t want to say I am picky, but picky is probably the right word for the type of person I employ. The energy they bring to the workplace and what they will give to our customers is important. The right people have been receptive to the ads, which has something to do with my language. They look at the ads and say, “Well, that sounds like the place that I want to work,” and then they have a good experience and want to stay.

Somebody I spoke to the other day said she employs people for personality and trains for skill. Do you agree?
Yeah, absolutely. I can’t fix a bad attitude, but I can teach the basic skills to run a roadhouse. Working in the Roadhouse is not rocket science, but you’ve got to want to be here, you’ve got to want to get up every day, and you’ve got to enjoy the work. You’ve got to love customer service. And I am not backward in coming forwards when I tell people that. 

Why do you take that approach?
Birdsville is my home; only a few people have ever called Birdsville home. We’re a tiny town. It physically hurts me if somebody has a bad experience in Birdsville. So I do whatever I can to ensure people have a fantastic experience. It’s just love for this town and what it represents in the broader Australian community and, indeed, the western Queensland community.

What do you love most about Birdsville?
It’s family! Yes, we’re a town. Yes, we all have our own little houses and yards, but we are just one big family, and most of us have lived here all our lives. We all went to school together, and many who went away have returned. So if someone has a bad time in Birdsville, it is like them walking into your house and saying they didn’t feel welcome.
We need to avoid that at all costs.

How important is tourism for Birdsville?
It is vital. These communities don’t exist, and businesses don’t stay open, because of half a dozen cattle stations in the area and a bit of local government work.

Sometimes, it gets tiring, especially during significant events like the Big Red Bash and the Birdsville Races. But I remind the team if it wasn’t for tourism, we wouldn’t have jobs, we wouldn’t have businesses and services. Towns of 100 people do not sustain businesses of our scale, like the Roadhouse, the hotel or the bakery, without tourism. So we must have tourists and visitors and give them a fantastic experience.

What did you learn from the COVID-19 lockdowns?
New South Wales was cut off from the rest of the country for six to eight months, and we had a lot of people coming through Birdsville, up and down the Birdsville Track, who were ill-prepared. People were not coming through by choice. There were health issues, family issues, someone had died, someone was sick, or they were moving to a different state.

Google says it’s a yellow line from Cairns to Adelaide, and people assumed that would be bitumen with plenty of fuel stops and phone reception. They were not used to checking road conditions, reports and road surfaces.

We realised we need to be more vocal about what people are coming into. We need better signage and media around safety, vehicle types, road conditions and surfaces. For example, we need signs at the bottom of the Birdsville Track spelling out that there is 500 kilometres of dirt, no fuel for 320 kilometres and no phone reception.

What does your team expect of you?
They expect me to be cool, calm and collected. It’s about managing staff and customer expectations and deciding the most productive way to use the team without overstretching them. It may sound clichéd, but it doesn’t feel like work. As soon as I bought the Roadhouse, I knew its success or failure, regardless of circumstances, depended on me.

Where do you get your determination?
Probably Mum; she is a stubborn lady. You saw the golf course. It took 26 years from the time she came up with the idea and the design, to the first event on the 18-hole course. It was a real community project and she never gave up, which shows some serious perseverance, patience and resilience.

My parents have been good at allowing us to develop our personalities. I get support for nearly all my ideas, even the crazy ones, from walking across the Simpson Desert to running across the country. Mum goes, “Yeah!” and Dad rolls his eyes and goes, “Oh god!”

I realise how fortunate I am to have people in my close-knit circle who don’t doubt me and my abilities. And one of the things I learned, particularly with the ultramarathon that I now run, was how many people don’t have that support. It doesn’t matter if you fail or set a goal that doesn’t work out. I find it sad, because I know how many more things people would try if the people around them said, “Have a go.”

What drives you?
I have never been comfortable coasting, and that is different from not being content. I love my life in Birdsville. I search for more because I have more to offer. I have more good that I can do and more adventures to create. So when I can no longer do these things, I want to say I took every opportunity I could.

Jenna Brook has given a lot to Birdsville since returning in 2011. Not long after getting back, she wanted a challenge and decided to walk across the Simpson Desert.

It was an audacious idea: 430 kilometres over 13 days crossing a thousand sand dunes. The walk raised $37,000 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, which plays a huge role in remote communities. And Jenna fell in love with the desert.

In 2015 you became involved in the Big Red Run (a 250 kilometre multistage desert challenge). After first participating as a walker, you later volunteered behind the scenes and were the self-appointed Campsite Cheer Coordinator in 2017 and 2018. What did that mean to you?
It is incredible to experience the big skies, the massive sand dunes and the rockiness of the vast gibber plains. It really challenges you in a unique environment. So it was really sad when the organisers decided they would focus their energy on the Big Red Bash and no longer hold the Run.

Over a birthday lunch in Hahndorf in 2019, you and a group of friends decided to organise your own ultramarathon, which became the Simpson Desert Ultra (SDU). In 2021 there were 190 runners, mostly women, of all levels of experience. How did you manage that event?
All my friends came out and volunteered their time to mark the course and provide medical support. We set up marquees at the checkpoints, so the runners had support even when they passed through at 2am.

The SDU tests the limits of endurance of even the hardiest runner, but it is astounding what a little support can do for somebody’s self-confidence. Don’t get me wrong, not everyone finished. But there is an enormous sense of satisfaction when you do something you didn’t believe was possible, so even getting close is a tremendous achievement. That is what’s rewarding for me and why our team loves to do it.

Your biggest challenge so far has been Running for Bums in 2018. It saw you on a 4500 kilometres solo run from the southern tip of Tasmania to the top of Cape York. Along the way you raised $70,000 for bowel cancer research.
Running for Bums seemed like a great idea at five in the morning! I’d never been a runner, but I wanted to learn how to run and to challenge myself. I got myself a coach and asked, “Could you train me to run from one end of Australia to the other?” That was in September 2016, so I had a year and a half to get fit enough for the long haul to the Cape.

I chose Bowel Cancer Australia because bowel cancer is the second largest killer in Australia; unfortunately, awareness about the importance of screening, especially among young women, is very low in the bush.

We have a family history of bowel cancer, and I had my first colonoscopy when I was 25. I had several polyps removed, which was unusual at my age. The doctor told me I needed regular screening as there was a 50 per cent chance of me going on to develop cancer by age 30.

So it became Running for Bums. 

What did the training involve?
Wintertime was okay because I could train at any time of the day; however, over the summer, when it gets to 35 and 40°C, I’d get up at about 2.30am and do two or three hours of training.

How were you feeling when you started in February 2018?
The idea was to start in good condition and build fitness and stamina. I planned to run 45 kilometres daily, with the odd rest day, for four-and-a-half months.

I was okay. My body was good because I hadn’t done much in the six weeks before, except swimming. I did have a dodgy hip, but the doctor said if I could run through the pain, I was unlikely to damage it further. Mentally I was okay. Ignorance was bliss. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. 

You planned it kilometre by kilometre?
It was literally following the white line on the side of the road. I planned the whole four months before we started, so I knew exactly how far I needed to run each day. If I deviated from the plan, I would have to make it up overnight.

One of the things I learned was the magic that good sleep can perform on the body. I would go to bed, especially at the start, despondent and in a fair bit of pain. But I would wake up the next day and feel good. It never gets any easier, even as you build fitness and stamina, but sleep performs wonders.

You had a lot of media and social media coverage. Did you get the message across?
My route took me through inland Australia where bowel cancer awareness is low. I have a close affiliation with rural communities, but these people generally don’t want to talk about cancer.

Farmers, ag workers and older people don’t want to discuss blood in their poo, the symptoms or side effects. And these communities don’t have advocates for testing who give a strong message: “Hey, I know your business can’t live without you. But if you don’t go away and get that colonoscopy, get that screening, if you don’t send back the tests the Government sends you, you may not be around to run that business in five years or 10 years. So you need to find a way to make time, whatever the cost, to go and have that testing done.”

I chatted with people who’d lost loved ones and others who’d been putting off screening tests. In some cases, especially with young women, they had the symptoms, but were told, “You’re too young to have bowel cancer.” Now they had someone running through their town giving weight to their experience and saying, “Don’t be fobbed off, especially if you are young and female.”

Which parts of the run stand out for you?
One memory is of the very first day that I started on the mainland. I’d done Tassie, and I remember waking up thinking, “I won’t be too disappointed if I stop now.” I let that thought sit with me for a minute, maybe two, and then I got up, and that was the mainland started. 

In the middle of New South Wales, it was stinking hot, around 38°C. They were long, hot days on the bitumen. The most important thing was to keep my core temperature down, so I would wear an ice-filled neck sock from about nine in the morning until I finished running at about 1pm.

The stretch between Emerald and Charters Towers in Queensland was tough. I had ten 50 kilometre days in a row. My shins were painful, and I couldn’t run downhill for four weeks. It would have been easy to give up, but I had a job to do and goal to achieve.

How did it feel when you reached the end, at the tip of Cape York?
Ah, it was bittersweet. I loved the Cape York section of the run, especially the solitude and the landscape. It was all
new to me. We camped in a tent each night, and for three weeks it was just me and my team.

The final day was tough. Everyone was there and wanted to experience the finish with me physically and on social media. There were two parts to me that day. One Jenna wanted to share the day with everyone who helped me on the journey, and the other wanted to be alone. It was overwhelming; I am naturally an introvert, and I just wanted to be alone.

I guarantee that one day I will go back to Cape York, and I will walk to the tip by myself and have that moment for me.

What’s the next challenge?
I would love to see Birdsville promoted as a year-round destination for tourists. Birdsville will always be a stopover
for people adventuring by 4WD in the Simpson Desert or travelling the Birdsville Track, but it has so much
more to offer. There is beauty in the desert even in the hottest months when the temperature regularly tops 40°C! 

I want travellers to learn about the area’s history, experience the Indigenous culture, enjoy a sunset from the
top of Big Red and swim in the town’s billabong to cool off. We even hope to have night golf soon!

And that is just the start. 

For more information about travelling to Birdsville, see visitbirdsville.com