There is a moment in my conversation with David Counsell when it becomes very clear that Outback Rowing isn’t really about rowing at all.
Of course, there are boats. There are races. There are ergos and oars and some very serious rowers. But underneath all of that is something much bigger… community, physical and mental wellbeing, tourism, opportunity and a determination to make our rural communities places where people don’t just work, but genuinely want to live.
David is a farmer from Barcaldine, a former Brisbane Grammar boarder and now President of Outback Rowing Australia. His own relationship with rowing began almost accidentally in his final year at school. A cricketer until then, he’d watched the rowers in the boarding house and been drawn to their dedication and camaraderie. Eventually, he climbed into a boat – and was hooked.
Decades later, rowing has found its way back into David’s life in a very different setting.
The extraordinary Barcaldine Recreation Park was built to give locals another recreational opportunity and help create the lifestyle infrastructure small communities need to attract and retain people. David had nothing to do with its construction. He simply looked at that magnificent stretch of water once it was there and thought: why couldn’t we row on it?
That question tells you quite a lot about David.
Outback Rowing has since grown from a group of Brisbane rowers taking boats west into something far more ambitious. Through its Bush Boats program, donated and refurbished boats are transported into country towns, removing one of the biggest barriers to establishing rowing locally. The organisation now supports rowing across communities including Moree, Cunnamulla, Chinchilla, Barcaldine, St George and Nyngan, with more towns in its sights.
David’s vision is to see another ten or twenty towns with a rowing boat beside a local river, lake, weir or waterhole and a group of people who simply get together and row.
Not necessarily to win anything.
Just to row.
And that is what I found so exciting about this conversation.
For rural and remote families, we spend so much time talking about the opportunities our children leave home to access. Rowing is a perfect example. A child might discover the sport at boarding school and love it, but once they come home there is often nowhere to continue.
David wants to change that.
He’s calling on boarding families – particularly those parents who already understand and love rowing – to become part of the movement. Grab some kids during the holidays. Bring them west. Help establish a crew. Become the person in your own town who says, why couldn’t we do this here?
And yes, he’s thrown down a fairly cheeky challenge to the Darling Downs to come and take on the Longreach boarders.
The Australian Outback Rowing Regatta itself captures everything Outback Rowing is trying to achieve. The 2026 journey runs from 30 September to 5 October, incorporating a convoy through regional Queensland before racing in Barcaldine and Longreach. It’s deliberately designed as more than a conventional regatta – an experience that introduces visitors to the people, industries, landscapes and communities of the outback.
There is something in David’s philosophy that feels very familiar to me.
At Spirit of the Bush, our focus is keeping rural and remote families living and working in the communities that need them by helping address one of the greatest barriers they face – access to education.
David is tackling something different, but the underlying belief is remarkably similar.
Living in rural Australia shouldn’t mean accepting fewer opportunities.
Sometimes building thriving communities starts with something enormous. And sometimes it starts because someone looks at a stretch of water in Barcaldine and says, why don’t we put a rowing boat on that?
David did.
And now he’s inviting the rest of us to get in the boat.
Discover Outback Rowing Australia
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
