Australians call the uninhabitable desert areas in the center of the continent "Dead Heart". Out here, smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, is the settlement of Birdsville - 23 houses and a pub with liquor license. Telephone service didn't arrive before 1979 - some 90 years after the locals first had applied to it. One weekend out of each year, however, this forgotten place is turned in a crowded inferno as some 5,000 civilization-weary Australians descend here for the annual Birdville Cup Horse Race. Buses, four-wheel drives, motorbikes and small airplanes invade the place like a swarm of locusts. The drunken merriment reaches its crescendo on Staurday night, when everyone indulges in a final uproarious round of revelry. By Monday morning all that remains behind are 23 houses, a pub with liquor license - and, strewn everywhere, 80,000 empty beer cans.