Is the world’s most outrageous David Bowie experience found in this tiny town in outback Australia?

Mention a David Bowie pilgrimage and diehard fans might hazard a guess that I’m following the music idol’s alter-egos through old haunts in London, New York or Berlin, where—lyrically speaking—Ziggy played guitar, Major Tom was a junkie and the Thin White Duke returned. 

But no. I’m in my campervan blustering down an unsealed road in a ball of red dust towards Carinda, a remote outback town in New South Wales—population 165—which, over the first weekend of October every year, turns into a unique David Bowie mecca. 

Named after the 1980s hit that rocketed Bowie into mainstream stardom, Let’s Dance Carinda is a two-day tribute festival born in the aftermath of the icon’s death to cancer a decade ago. But there’s more to the story than that.

Back in 1983, a blonde and tanned Bowie, dressed simply in a cream shirt and pleated chinos, strolled into The Carinda Hotel bar, leaned back against its yellow glazed tile wall and performed his soon-to-be-released smash hit Let’s Dance to a room of bemused regulars. A skeleton crew from London, and his music video director David Mallet, captured it all on film. Apparently, the pub owner was the only person who knew Bowie was coming. 

It was a historic moment for the relatively unknown, drought-ridden town eight hours northwest of Sydney, where I’m traveling from. Let’s Dance went on to be listed in the 300 best-selling UK singles of all time, and the accompanying music video is widely agreed to be the most powerful and iconic of Bowie’s career.

“Remember, this was 1983. We were virtually invisible, Black faces were rare on our screens. I can’t overstate how stunning it was to see Aboriginal people in a film clip, with David Bowie no less.”

- Stan Grant, First Nations journalist

It’s well-documented that Bowie loved Australia, and often took road trips from Sydney, where he owned an apartment for almost a decade. Archives from March 1983 detail his intention to shoot music videos for his new album (also called Let’s Dance) in Sydney and its outskirts before taking a few weeks’ holiday  “in the bush”. 

“Bowie wanted to film in a pub on a dirt road in a remote location,” says Joy Dare, Let’s Dance Carinda festival director. And The Carinda Hotel is certainly that—a lone pub baked into wide crossroads, where dust floats in the shards of low sun that lights up the formica and lino. 

That’s the image seared into my mind—Bowie, luminous and gloriously out of place. I was a teenager when I first saw it. He sparked a curiosity that has never left me and fearlessly showed us that the route less traveled is one worth taking.

Some 40 years on, I’m ambushed by goosebumps walking into the bar. The pub has been refurbished and the walls replastered. But ‘Bowie’s wall’ is perfectly preserved, akin to a heritage site. A new polished concrete floor stops two-feet short of the shrine, allowing the original terracotta and olive chequered lino to frame the bona fide  tiles where he casually propped his backside. A cardboard cutout of the star marks the spot. Above, an exhibition style collection of photography documents the day, and Let’s Dance—now immortalized on YouTube—loops on a TV screen.

“This is my mum with Bowie,” says 51-year-old Alison Mayberry proudly showing me a photo. The festival is starting down the road and the pub has emptied, so we have the cardboard Bowie to ourselves. As we take snaps of each other, she explains her late mother Aileen Usher was among the 1983 locals captured on film that day. Mayberry was only eight years old, but she remembers him being the talk of the town. “Mum said he was very chatty and had time for everyone,” she reminisces. 

Mayberry and six of her family members, spanning two generations, drove nine hours from Wollongong, a town on the New South Wales south coast, to pay homage at the festival this year. By the time I get to the festival, I feel I’ve already got my USD$35 (AUD$50) ticket’s worth—which includes a campspot. An array of camping rigs and fixed glamping tents (extra cost) circle 500 fans and locals who are gathering under clear blue skies at the town’s showgrounds, set up with one stage, a bar, food truck and a handful of merchandise stalls. 

The afternoon is filled with country, contemporary and tribute artists intermingled with a competition for ‘Best Dressed Bowie’, with a category for adults, kids—and dogs. “I made it in my garage,” says a big wooden red lightning bolt leaning casually at the bar and chatting to a stubbled Aladdin Sane (one of Bowie’s personas). In Let’s Dance Bowie sings “put on your red shoes and dance the blues”, so most of the town gets in the spirit by spraypainting an old pair of shoes red. I join in, painting a pair of new plimsoles at the ‘Red Shoes Remembrance’ stall run by a local art group.

Carinda sits within Gamilaraay country (also written Gamilaroi or Kamilaroi), a vast landscape of open horizons, flat semi-arid plains and complex river systems. The Let’s Dance music video follows a young Indigenous couple (played by Joelene King and Terry Roberts) on a journey from the outback to the city, navigating the social divides of 80s Australia. 

It is credited with spotlighting the treatment of Indigenous Australians to an international audience. Despite having a huge soft spot for Australia, Bowie was outspoken about the racism he came across on his travels here, such as segregated bars.

After the news of Bowie’s death in 2016, King said to Australia’s National Indigenous Television (NITV): “He used his music to get a message across and let the world know something he felt very strongly about without throwing it in peoples’ faces”. And prominent Indigenous journalist Stan Grant was quoted in The Guardian saying: “Remember, this was 1983. We were virtually invisible, Black faces were rare on our screens. I can’t overstate how stunning it was to see Aboriginal people in a film clip, with David Bowie no less.” Bowie was an inherently political voice, and he often explored societal issues through an allegorical or observational lens, from Heroes a song about the Berlin Wall, to his androgynous personas which opened up a dialogue for many communities about gender fluidity.

As the showground lights go down and stars spill across the dark skies of this one pub, one shop, one petrol pump town, I snuggle in my camper knowing the ultimate spine-tingler is yet to come: Tomorrow, Bowie returns to the pub.

Speaking of these personas, I watch as headliner act Starman puts on a stadium-worthy performance moving through several  Bowie alter-egos—and their costume changes—from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke.

Starman is Melbourne-based Jon Harris-Black, who, at 30, is a relative newcomer to Bowie’s music. “Every show is exhilarating and I’ve performed in out-of-the-way areas before, but this is the spot where he decided to make a music video for what ended up being his biggest commercial hit,” he says. The festival is a highlight for Harris-Black who worked for several years to refine this multi-persona show before he was happy to take it on the road. “There’s a pride in standing on this special piece of history,” he tells me.

As the showground lights go down and stars spill across the dark skies of this one pub, one shop, one petrol pump town, I snuggle in my camper knowing the ultimate spine-tingler is yet to come: Tomorrow, Bowie returns to the pub. 

At midday the Carinda Hotel doors swing open and around 60 people file in. Some join a beer queue or order a ‘Bowie Burger’. Others grab a prime spot opposite Bowie’s wall, where cardboard Bowie has been substituted with Starman in 1983 attire. 

In the crowd is arguably one of the world’s biggest Bowie fans—if we let money talk for a moment. Bopping with friends at the front of the bar is David Walsh, owner and founder of Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). At a London auction in 2022, Walsh bought Bowie’s handwritten Starman lyrics for USD$234,422 (AUD$335,000)—more than five times the estimated sale price. Walsh later admit he got carried away and paid too much for “a piece of paper”.

However, as it turns out, this nostalgic celebration too is worth a lot to Walsh. Dare says he made a “very generous” donation to the festival. “We rely on sponsorship,” she says, “and we like to keep the ticket price low for locals, so it really helped the festival this year.”

“Here’s the one we’re all here for,” announces Starman. As the funk rift of Let’s Dance rips out, a collective joy explodes through the tin roof. Beaming local Steve Greentree nails the magic: “There is only one place in the world Bowie fans can get this experience, and it’s in our little town in the outback.”

I started this whimsical journey chasing nostalgia. In this room, I swear I can feel Bowie’s soul. If there’s one celebrity I could bring back to life, I would choose David Bowie. The original Starman was always bigger than his music. On this weekend in Carinda, he still is. 

The 10th Anniversary of Let’s Dance Carinda takes place on the long weekend of October 3rd and 4th, 2026.

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