Randomness in the outback

I'm currently staying in Atherton, Queensland, which is about an hour inland from Cairns (using the world's slowest internet and what is possibly the smallest monitor still in use...I think it's a 13" CRT). Yesterday, I drove to a place called Chillagoe, which is another hour and a half inland from Atherton. Getting there involves a long drive through land which at best is marginal. When I got there, it was 98 degrees and dusty, with red earth which pretty obviously won't grow anything useful.

On the way back, I stopped at a town called Almaden. Specifically, I stopped at the railway hotel (read pub) in a town of about 150 in the middle of the desert. Inside the bar seemed very well-stocked, and the publican was the only person there. He asked me if I'd like to sit in the beer garden, which was this gorgeous little patio with ferns and orchids and other flowers I didn't recognise everywhere. I wonder how business usually was.