Cunnamulla means a big waterhole, a long stretch of water, and the Kunja people who gave it that name are the traditional owners of this country. They were not alone: the Paroo region was home to many Aboriginal groups, among them the Kullilli, Kooma, Budjiti, Murrawarri and Bidjara, peoples who read the river and the plains with knowledge built over countless generations. The pastoral frontier that arrived in the 1880s changed that world brutally. As sheep and cattle stations spread, many Kunja and their neighbours were pushed off their land and forced into fringe camps on the edge of the new town, living in hardship while the country they had always known was fenced and claimed. That history is not a footnote to Cunnamulla. It is the ground the town was built on, and the descendants of those families remain part of the community today.

Ask anyone in Australia about Cunnamulla and they may start to sing. The Cunnamulla Fella began as a song written by Stan Coster, drawn from his own days working as a ringer, a stockman, around these parts in the 1950s. Slim Dusty recorded it in 1965, and the easygoing portrait of a footloose outback horseman became a country standard and the town's unofficial anthem. After Dusty's death in 2003, the shire ran a national competition to honour the song, and in 2005 a double life-size bronze statue of the Cunnamulla Fella was unveiled in front of the Paroo Shire Hall, sculpted by Archie St Clair, a former stockman himself. Hat tilted, leaning easy, the bronze ringer has become the town's most photographed resident and a fitting tribute to the real shearers and drovers who shaped life out here.

Cunnamulla sits over the Great Artesian Basin, the vast underground reservoir that makes settled life possible across so much of inland Australia. The first artesian bore in the district was sunk in 1889, tapping ancient water trapped deep beneath the surface, and that buried sea still shapes the town. In 2024 the Cunnamulla Hot Springs opened behind the Shire Hall on the banks of the Warrego, channelling naturally heated artesian water into baths, an unlikely outback indulgence drawn from rock hundreds of metres down. Above ground, the Warrego itself remains the heart of the place. A car will take you out to the weir and the surrounding country, where the river country gives way to red plains, and the contrast between the green ribbon of water and the dry land beyond is the whole story of why anyone lives here.

Getting to Cunnamulla is part of its character. The town is about two hours' drive south of Charleville on the Mitchell Highway, a sealed two-lane road that floods often enough to be worth checking before you set out. Twice a week, Queensland Rail's Westlander train reaches Charleville and a connecting mini-bus carries passengers the rest of the way, a reminder of how far this is from the coast. There is no car rental and no public transport in town, but the attractions cluster within easy walking distance, and the rhythm of the place rewards slowing down. From here the outback opens up in every direction: west to Eulo and the Paroo River, and out to the opal-mining town of Yowah, where fortunes hide inside small stones. Cunnamulla is where the sealed world thins out and the real interior begins.