A famous Pub

Sunday 2nd August 2009
We were back on the road by 8am this morning heading further South along the Stuart Highway. Although today is Sunday the kids had a full day of school work as we had lots of time while travelling. Alexander started the day with a Mexican Standoff when he refused to do any school work, but the withdrawal of food soon had him back on track.
Our first stop was 170km down the road at a place called Daly Waters - apart from some WW2 remnants and the Stuart Tree there isn't much to see at this location, but the Daly Waters Pub is well worth the visit. It is a bit of an icon for travellers in this isolated area and we had to stop to find out why. The pub is an old tin building and the inside is stacked full of all sorts of collections from patrons. There are German Police Badges, Bra's, undies, national flags, shirts, name cards, foreign currency, number plates and everything else one can think of. A beautiful beer garden outside also houses a big BBQ area where they cook their famous Barra and Steak every night for the crowds that stay in the adjacent caravan facility. Like every good country pub this one also has a resident entertainer to keep the crowds amused at night. His name is Frank and we met him just outside the pub where he keeps his 12 bantam roosters which accompany him on his travels. Frank is actually from Renmark but spends every tourist season at Daly Waters entertaining the crowds with singing, jokes and bush poetry every night between April an August. The end of the season is coming up in a couple weeks when the weather up here starts to warm up and Frank is looking forward to returning back home to Renmark where his wife is. He says Daly Waters Pub had a very good season and there hasn't been any evidence of the Global Financial Crisis, quite the opposite, they had to extend the beer garden to accommodate more patrons.
Goes to show, a good pub is recession proof - people always like to eat, drink and be entertained, especially when times are a bit tough.
After a couple of Croissants and some ice cream we made tracks and spent the rest of the day in the car until we arrived at Banka Banka Station around 3pm in the afternoon. The little campground doesn't have power but there is plenty of spring water available so we gave the caravan and the car a bit of a wash before settling in for dinner and a slide show about station life at 7pm.