Drugs, drink and racism: where the Queen will go to 'know Australia'

"Waddaya wanna go there for?" asked the booking clerk at Ansett, the Australian domestic airline. "Bourke! That's the never-never, that's the back of beyond."

"Waddaya wanna go there for?" asked the booking clerk at Ansett, the Australian domestic airline. "Bourke! That's the never-never, that's the back of beyond."

The dusty outback town of Bourke, 500 miles north-west of Sydney, is indeed remote - so much so that it has given rise to a colloquialism, "back o' Bourke", which means in the middle of nowhere. However, next month it will be placed firmly on the map when it receives a flying visit from the Queen, who will be touring Australia for the first time in eight years.

The Queen, whose two-week itinerary was announced yesterday, expressed a desire to see rural Australia as well as the capital cities. Thus, as well as gracing Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth and Hobart with her presence, she will drop in on Alice Springs, in the Central Desert, Ballarat, a former Victorian gold mining settlement, Launceston, in provincial Tasmania, and Busselton, a bucket-and-spade resort in Western Australia.

And Bourke. Quite what the Queen will make of this swelteringly hot town of 3,500 souls is a matter of conjecture. But she is unlikely to be shown the crime statistics, which reinforce Bourke's image as one of the most lawless places in the country. Nor is it reasonable to assume that she will be given a guided tour of the appalling living conditions of its large aboriginal population. With its frontier spirit and rich history, by antipodean standards at least, Bourke occupies a place at the heart of the Australian rural myth. "To know Bourke is to know Australia," wrote Henry Lawson, the celebrated bush poet, after a visit in 1892.

Built on the banks of the Darling river, it was a bustling port in the 19th century, with paddle-steamers transporting wool to markets from the vast sheep stations on the surrounding plains. But modern Bourke is a dysfunctional place, dejected and down-at-heel, renowned for its drug problems and poor race relations. Tensions exploded three years ago when hundreds of disaffected aborigines rampaged along the main street, smashing shops and cars. The town has been quiet since, but retains a menacing undercurrent.

White people, who make up about two-thirds of the population, advise visitors to lock their cars and claim that it is unsafe to walk around at night. Shops and offices are protected by metal bars and wire mesh.

Bourke has 32 full-time police officers - an extraordinarily high number for the size of the town - with a reputation for heavy-handedness.

Talk to almost any white person in Bourke and within minutes he or she is complaining about the town's aborigines and blaming them for the crimewave.

In reality, statistics show that indigenous people commit about half the recorded crimes.

"It's getting worse around here: the aborigines are playing up a lot more," said Lynette Gooch, a barmaid at the River View Hotel, a pub in North Bourke, on the other side of the Darling. The pub, which has no view of the river whatsoever, considers itself fortunate because it is patronised by few aborigines.

At the Outback Motel, Des Smith, the owner, said: "There's one law for the whites and one for the blacks. When the blacks are arrested, the do-gooder magistrates just give them a tap on the wrist." He added: "They breed like flies. They start breeding when they're 14 and by the time they're 21 they've got six kids."

In Bourke, as in other country towns, indigenous people are at the bottom of the socio-economic heap.

Unemployment is widespread and alcoholism is rife. By 10.15am, a queue has formed outside the Post Office Hotel, one of the two grim pubs popular with aborigines.

Some aspects of Bourke may make the Queen feel more at home. There is a war memorial to the 33 local boys who died in the First World War and a bowling green where elderly matrons in spotless whites play in slow motion past dusk. Outside the town is Pera Bore, an orchard that sent a crate of oranges to Queen Victoria for her Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1887; she declared them the finest in the Empire.

The Queen, whose Australian visit follows a referendum last November in which the country narrowly rejected a proposal to become a republic, will be shown round an aboriginal radio station and a primary school that recently won an award for results achieved by its indigenous pupils.

But she will not see Alice Edwards Village, an aboriginal reserve on the fringes of town that is regarded as a no-go area for white people, where pizza companies refuse to deliver and the fire brigade will not venture without a police escort.

Here, aboriginal people live in squalor, crowded together in damp fibro houses with smashed-up walls and rotting sticks of furniture. Sitting on a broken bed on her veranda, 87-year-old Daisy Edwards, whose late sister Alice gave her name to the reserve, said she was pleased that the Queen was coming to Bourke.

"Maybe she'll give us our land back," she said, and roared with laughter.

Jack Scott, the co-ordinator of the aboriginal employment scheme, said: "If you want to see the pits, you've come to the right town."

He said the royal visit was of little interest to most indigenous people. "The Queen can come and go; it's of no account to me," he added. "It's her subjects who have got us right down in the gutter."