Queensland Government
Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services
Women's basketball team

The Outback Dreamers

Nine Mount Isa women have made their dreams a reality by playing in the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Basketball Association National Indigenous Championships.

Lisa Parker, captain of the Outback Dreamers team, said they harnessed the local community spirit to get themselves to Adelaide.

“Mount Isa – it’s all for sport out here,” Lisa said. “A lot of people are into sport and businesses try to get involved.”

The national championships are a big event on the basketball calendar. This year, more than 40 teams competed in the sixth annual event, coming from the length and breadth of the country.

“It was a great opportunity to play against players that play at a national level,” Lisa said. “It’s a good social event too. We met heaps of people, especially from WA, which has a lot of teams. It’s good to socialise and meet new people.”

And the Outback Dreamers are a very sociable team. All are members of the Blazers club and play at various levels in the Mount Isa basketball competition. They are also family.

The Dreamers got their first taste of the National Indigenous Championships in 2009, when the event was held in Cairns. They missed the 2010 event in Melbourne but made an early commitment to get to Adelaide in 2011.

“Late last year (2010) we decided we were going to go,” Lisa said. “We just decided to do some fundraising – wrote letters to local businesses seeking sponsorship and donations for raffles. From the fundraising we did in 2009, we knew what worked and what didn’t.”

The ladies dedicated almost six months on the task. They ran under-18s discos, chocolate drives, and a barbecue, face painting and balloon sales at the city’s basketball grand finals. They delivered phone books to the whole Mount Isa area and had eight sausage sizzles. Local businesses from across the spectrum signed on as sponsors.

In the end, the hard work paid off. “We didn’t take anything out of our own pockets for the trip,” Lisa said.

The championships were held in Adelaide lastSeptember. The Outback Dreamers, competing in the open women’s draw, won two of their six matches. “We lost the rest by just a few points, which is good considering a lot of the other teams play together throughout the year,” Lisa said. “This was the first time that all our girls played together as a team.”

In 2012, the championships are in Tasmania. The Dreamers are already plotting their trip.

  • There were two other Queensland teams in this year’s championships – the Ipswich Jarjums (under-14s boys) and Djillinba (open women) team from Rockhampton.