Almost thirty years worth of gruelling bus rides and scorching days in the field have done nothing to blunt outback greengrocer Bruce Paulsen’s love of cricket.
It was around 1990 or 1991 that Bruce founded the Quilpie Killer Whales club to play in the Charleville and districts cricket competition.
The team is still going strong and although Bruce may have lost a yard or two in pace, he is showing no sign of hanging up the whites any time soon.
"We had a local in-town cricket competition, and that started to struggle so the idea came to move to a more competitive environment," he said.
"That's when we joined the Charleville competition. We joined in the 1990 or 1991 season I think. It's been a long haul but a lot of fun along the way."
Quilpie is a small town of about 600 people about two hours west of Charleville.
Many of the team's players worked on the land, Bruce said, and some had to travel as much as two hours just to play a home game.
"They travel a long way for every game - maybe two hours for a home game, plus another four hours to play away," he said.
"When we go to Tambo for example it's a 12,000km round trip."
Bruce has been relentless in his fundraising efforts to keep the team plugging away year after year.
"I raise a lot of money to subsidise the cost of travel. An away game might cost the team $1000 with bus hire, a driver, fuel, food and drink.
"If guy's have to pay $100 to play it's not going to happen."
Playing cricket gave the locals the perfect opportunity to forget about the tough times on the land for a few hours every weekend, Bruce said.
"The country guys are in the midst of this dreadful drought. Even for the local guys it's an escape from the rigours of every day life.
"Some of the families living out here for their whole lives, they talk about it like it's almost an unprecedented drought. Hopefully we can come through and prosper at the the end."
Bruce was recently put forward as a Cricket Australia Community Champion by one of his team mates, a deserved acknowledgement of his dedication to the game.
"I certainly thank him for going to the trouble of doing that," he said.
"It's not why you do it, but you've got to thank them for that."
