As we all boarded the coach after breakfast this morning, the radio was predicting a tropical storm for the "top end", which is what the Australians imaginatively call the part of the Northern Territory we're heading into now. Our main stop of the day was scheduled to be a dip in the famous thermal springs at Mataranka, and this was to involve a walk through the forest, so the idea that we were heading into the middle of a storm didn't strike me as particularly auspicious - but up here, you usually just accept things like storms and floods as inevitable, shrug and hope for the best. We stopped for lunch at the Daly Waters pub, voted the best wayside Inn in the Northern Territory. It is also Australia's remotest pub, a fact which has clearly only served to add to the attraction of the place. People actually drive hundreds of kilometres out of their way just to visit Daly Waters, either because somebody has told them about it or they've read about it in a book somewhere - but whatever the reason for stopping by, few are disappointed by what they find. The pub isn't actually on the Stuart Highway, which means that the coach had to turn off and drive along a bumpy track to reach it, but this just adds to its remoteness and somehow I feel it would lose a lot of its charm if it suddenly found itself next to a main road. As well as being incredibly remote, Daly Waters is also able to lay claim to being Australia's oldest licensed public house, having been established in 1893. It has everything I would expect from an outback pub - there's a verandah attached to the front that looks as though it could fall off at any moment; a sorry looking dog baking in the mid-day sun, with just enough energy to lift an ear and raise an eye as I walk past; locals sitting around in huge floppy hats sipping beer and telling each other that nothing has happened today. But what makes Daly Waters unique and draws people here from all over the world are the things you wouldn't expect. Our coach captain had been teasing the women on board all morning that the staff at Daly Waters expect all female visitors to donate an item of underwear for them to hang over the bar - upon arrival I have to say that many of them were relieved to find that this activity was entirely voluntary, although there really is a fair collection of bras and panties tacked up over the bar which have been left behind over the years. The walls are covered from top to bottom with photos of visitors sitting around, posing, or taking part in regular events and live entertainment which the pub lays on. There were football scarves, badges, stickers, dirty (in both meanings of the word) posters, foreign flags, beer mats and other assorted stuff stuck to every surface. This, as you can imagine, gives the pub a real international feel. In fact, several beams are covered from floor to ceiling with coins and banknotes from around the world. I don't think there was a single bit of free space anywhere to stick anything new, so I assume there must also be a massive storeroom somewhere so that they can remove old stuff and replace it with new offerings on a regular basis. Outside the front of the pub is Australia's remotest traffic light, in perfectly working order, serving absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than to make people point and say "What the hell?" Out the back, there is a small collection of cages in which birds of various varieties are kept as pets and also serve as entertainment for visitors if there's any time left after spending a couple of hours reading everything on the walls - one of the parrots seems to have taken a particular taste to lager and refuses to drink anything else. And make sure you don't forget your swimming trunks, because this is the only pub I've ever seen with its own swimming pool! Staff at the pub, as is often the case in outback Australian watering holes like this, are made up of a combination of local characters and backpackers looking for work on the way through. Sometimes, you'll strike up a conversation with the girl behind the bar and discover that she was just travelling through on her way somewhere else and liked the place so much that she decided to stay and work for a few months - and to be honest, in a place like this with tourists heading through every day, you're never going to be lonely and you'll always be meeting new people. Getting to Daly Waters isn't a problem - most of the Australian tours come here either for a couple of hours or to stay in the adjoining motel, there's a small airfield the size of a postage stamp down the road which has the cheek to call itself an international airport and believe it or not there is even a Helipad out the back just in case you have your own helicopter in the garage.
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