Aussie dunny run news OT

Thousands gather for outback dunny run

September 26 2002 at 12:05PM

Canberra - Racing to the toilet is not unusual. But in one town in Australia's Outback - where a toilet is known as a dunny - it's the dunny that does the dashing.

In one of Outback Australia's more bizarre rituals, about five thousand people are expected to gather on Sunday for the annual Dunny Derby, the highlight of a five-day Outback Festival held by the town of Winton in Queensland state.

Sixteen teams of five members each will drag an outdoor toilet shed, mounted on wheels, along a 200m stretch of Winton's main street. They'll compete for R10 000 in prize money.

According to festival organiser Robyn Stephens, each team will include a dunny jockey who sits on the toilet inside while two of the other team members pull and two of them push.

Along the way the jockey must leap off and gather various items, including a toilet seat and 'dunny paper'.

Famed as the birthplace of Australia's unofficial national anthem Waltzing Matilda, a song about a sheep thief, Winton is about 1 500km north-west of the Queensland state capital Brisbane. - Sapa-AP

enough said really...

If you lived 1500km northwest of Brisbane, you'd be bored too. Rather empty area...

More famous is Alice Springs' Henley-on-Todd regatta. The Todd River is dry for most of the year, and the locals have a 'boat race' each year in which they build Flintstones-style boats with no bottoms so that teams of people can stick their legs through and run down the dry riverbed.

Ironically, twice in recent history it has been cancelled because unexpected rain left water flowing in the river.