Explore our iconic R.M.Williams boots, celebrated for quality and iconic Australian style.
Stock your wardrobe well with our refreshed range of cotton shirts.
Complete your set with our range of handcrafted leather belts.
Explore our latest menswear styles and build your look from the boot up.
Elevate your style with our collection of handcrafted leather bags.
Explore our latest womenswear styles and build your look from the boot up.
Our iconic leather boots are now available in junior sizes, so every member of the family can step into our world of craftsmanship.
Made by hand in our Adelaide workshop from soft kangaroo leather, the R.M.Williams baby booties are a beautiful gift for parents to be.
One Piece of Leather is the seminal book about Reginald Murray Williams, the company he built and an enduring legacy of Australian craftsmanship.
Our iconic Chelsea boots have countless unique qualities worth celebrating, but perhaps the most important is their signature one-piece leather design.
Immerse yourself in our world of craftsmanship with our special in-store services and events.
Christmas gifts for him
Christmas gifts for her
Made to last
Boot care products
Sustainability
Online purchases can be returned free of charge within 60 days. Read more
Exchanges for online purchases can be made in-store only.
Once a return is received for processing, refunds generally take up to 10 business days to reach your account depending on your financial institution.
Full returns policy
Accepted debit/credit cards:
Visa, MasterCard, American express
Buy now pay later options:
PayPal Pay in 4, Afterpay, Zip Pay, Klarna
Other payment options:
PayPal, R.M.Williams physical gift cards, R.M.Williams digital gift cards
R.M.Williams boots are fully repairable. You can browse our range of repair services here.
Find out how to return your boots for repair here.
Estimated processing time for repairs is 10-12 weeks.
Click and collect is available at a range of R.M.Williams stores. Simply select the click and collect option at checkout, then collect it from your selected store within 24 hours. Find out more here.
The 2024 Big Red Bash site, ‘Bashville’, located 35km west of Birdsville, Qld, on the edge of the Simpson Desert. Photo by Matt Williams.
While many outback events are struggling or closing, some are going better than ever.
STORY KATE NEWSOME | OUTBACK MAGAZINE
The choir’s song reverberates across the dusk-lit waterhole and through the red cliffs of Ormiston Gorge, NT. Here, in the outback’s heartland, more than 2,500 people gather in this natural amphitheatre nestled within the West MacDonnell Ranges/Tjoritja to watch the Desert Song Festival finale.
For more than a decade, Desert Song has assembled maestros, musicians and vocal groups for a Central Australian celebration of culture, language and melding song traditions. But in September 2024, ‘A Capella in The Gorge’ marked the final curtain for the decade-old festival.
There are many reasons Desert Song’s director Morris Stuart AM is bowing out: age, an absence of a directorial successor, and a reliance on volunteers and audiences in the thick of a cost-of-living crisis. This all comes despite Morris’s advocacy for greater government funding and support for Desert Song, and events of the same ilk.
All manner of events bring visitors together with rural and remote communities – everything from literary, film and music festivals, markets and street parades to agricultural shows, mud trials, marathons, musters, rodeos and regatta races on dry riverbeds. But many face an uncertain future. Desert Song is one in a slew of event casualties announced across Australia this year. Many are scaling back, on hiatus, or calling it quits, with ramifications rippling across the outback.
“It would be presumptuous of me to speak of the role of a festival. But I think the one thing that we all have in common is this connection to place and to community,” Morris says. “It might sound like we’re just having a bit of fun, but it’s fun with purpose. It’s about being human.”
Although Desert Song has exited the festival scene, Morris remains optimistic that it will leave “legacy dust” for future outback events. “There’s always going to be good things that will come out of Central Australia,” he says.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the event and live entertainment industry, Federal Government arts investment and advisory body Creative Australia published the Soundcheck report in April 2024. It revealed that, in the 2022–23 financial year, about half of the 535 music festivals held in Australia were hosted outside major cities – bolstering local economies and talent. In that period, more than a third of music festivals Soundcheck surveyed were running at a loss.
The Birdsville Races. Photo by Angie Butler.
A variety of factors have inhibited festivals’ post-pandemic recovery: rising overhead costs in production and artist fees, freight, insurance, security and extreme weather events muddying the experience of audiences who continue to tighten their belts notch-by-notch.
One of the biggest music festivals in Australia, Splendour in the Grass, was among those axed for 2024. Further inland, the 65-year-old Mount Isa Rodeo, the largest rodeo in the Southern Hemisphere, announced it had entered voluntary administration in October. In the lead-up, ticket sales had reportedly dropped about 40% and organisers were denied a requested state government bailout. Michael Brennan, an appointed voluntary administrator from SV Partners, said in a statement: “We hope this is not the end of the Mount Isa Rodeo, but rather a second chance to secure its future by restructuring and reinvigorating this annual community festival”.
“It’s a bit like agriculture – you have good years and you have bad years. You’ve just gotta be able to ride it out,” says Outback Music Festival Group managing director Greg Donovan. Greg and his team own and operate Broken Hill’s Mundi Mundi Bash and Birdsville’s Big Red Bash.
Both Bash events follow a similar formula: outback locale, multi-day line-up, big-name headliners, a dash of Aussie larrikinism and humour with ‘undie runs’ and record-breaking Nutbush dances, and a mainstage as the epicentre for caravans stretching out every which way.
Although the Mundi Mundi’s 2025 lineup is confirmed, the Big Red Bash is entering what organisers are likening to the UK’s Glastonbury Festival ‘fallow year’ – a pause before returning in July 2026.
Figures provided by the Outback Music Festival Group show that, during the 3-day Big Red Bash in 2024, Birdville’s population (of approximately 100) swelled with some 7,461 attendees from outside the local Diamantina region. Expenditure linked to the Big Red Bash was estimated to be almost $16 million, with more than 45% of spending directly in the Diamantina.
“Our outback community has come to rely on it,” says Diamantina Shire mayor Francis Murray. Francis often travels out of Birdsville, pulling up at little towns on the way. “Longreach, Windorah, Quilpie, Charleville, Jundah, Winton, Boulia, Marree, all through SA … every one of them tells me that the best week of business is the Big Red Bash.”
Donovan Rutherford at the 2022 Mount Isa Mines Rodeo. Photo by Stephan Mowbray Photography.
However, with rising costs, Francis says, even running smaller local events is a challenge. “But if we didn’t have them, our station people wouldn’t even get to know each other because that’s where they meet in town,” he says.
The Bedourie Camel Races usually take place the weekend following the Big Red Bash, with most attendees filing in from the festival. In lieu of the Bash’s 2025 absence, Diamantina Shire is considering how existing events and the region’s camel racing circuit can take inspiration from the Big Red Bash – benefiting locals and encouraging tourists to make the cross-country pilgrimage.
“They can go to a festival anywhere, so the authenticity of it being in the outback has to be part of it,” says Music in the Mulga founder and coordinator, Carmel Meurant.
When Carmel – who has sat on the Outback Queensland Tourism board – and her husband David owned Wandilla station, near Eulo, Qld, they began hosting a self-funded music festival. “Prior to living there, we lived on the Mitchell Highway,” Carmel says. “You see all the vehicles going up and down and up and down and thinking, ‘How can we keep them in our shire for a little bit longer?’ A festival in the outback, it’s not just going to the event, it’s the journey. You work with other towns and shires around you because it’s like a trail.”
Although the Meurants have recently sold Wandilla station and moved closer to Toowoomba, Qld, they will continue to run Music in the Mulga. Already, the Thargomindah Rodeo Grounds has offered to accommodate the festival and Carmel will drive west to run it. “Fingers are crossed it all goes well,” Carmel says. “I’m sure it will, but there’s a lot of hard work before then.”
As various outback event committees rethink how future festivals will look, Music in the Mulga and the Shearers Shindig at Thargomindah have announced they will come together to offer a combined 10-day event in south-west Queensland in May 2025.
Carmel says that her 6-year-old grandson Will recently volunteered to take over. “You know what I’m gonna do when I grow up? I’m gonna run Music in the Mulga,” he said, “but I’ll be doing it twice a year!”