DALY WATERS PUB
LOCAL HUMOUR
I was guided into the campsite by a former British soldier from Portsmouth who had settled here after leaving the service many years before. He was friendly and became even more so when I congratulated him on his soccer team having recently won the FA cup.
I remembered the pub vaguely from my sixties visit.Most of the bar staff were from Europe and the atmosphere was one of maximum kitsch with walls and ceilings covered with collections of ties, football shirts,badges( Victorian police was represented) and even several items of ladies lingerie. But a good friendly place to stop on a cool night and its popularity was born out by the crowded camp site and large number of silver haired travellers crammed into the bar. I signed up for the dinner( a ute burger!!) and musical entertainment which consisted of a good singer-guitarist doing Elvis and Buddy Holley numbers(he certainly knew his audience's demographic) and I was both touched and tickled by the sight of suntanned and wrinkly, sixties something women hand-jiving to the music. What memories that brought back-Finnigan's dance hall-Manchester-where I indulged my Saturday night fevers in the early sixties.
INSIDE THE BAR
ANYONE FOR A NUMBER PLATE?
Despite the cold I slept snugly in my swag and after a hearty breakfast at the pub, whilst my phone recharged,I continued south heading for Tennant Creek.the tree coverage of the countryside began to thin out and the Lonely Planet guide advised that near Renner Springs the wet/dry tropical region gave way a desrt climate.As if to deliberately contradict this and right on cue, it began to rain and continued to pour down for the rest of the day-some 600klms-all the way to Alice Springs.
I had planned to take a break at Tennant Creek but it looked so depressing in the rain and was mostly shut up on Saturday afternoon that I decided once more to put in a marathon performance behind the wheel and shoot for Alice Springs-500klms further south. I was still wearing just a short-sleeve shirt and shorts( my habitual garb for the past three sun drenched months) and began to feel the cold when I left my car and certainly attracted the stares of locals rugged up in thick wind cheaters and with beanies protecting their heads from the chill.
It was a tough drive in relentless rain. The Devil's marbles looked so dull and colourless that they didn't even merit a photograph and to ave got out to walk around invited a drenching.I made a fuel and toilet stop at another historic pub at Barrow Creek. this was next to the old telegraph station with he graves of operators who had been speared by aboriginal tribesmen.I was beginning to feel miserable once separated from my car's heater and on entering the pub met the sympathetic eye of a classical bush character with white bushy beard, fleecy lined tarten jacket and a very broad brimmed sundowner hat. He was sipping a beer by a roaring fire and urged me to come over and warm my bones.
The car park was like a stream bed and a hellish drive lay ahead.It became hard to see the road at the onset of twilight and overtaking road trains, throwing back a constant spray of water and red mud, was no joke. Fortunately nobody coming the other way.The last 200 klms were particularly hard. I kept hitting patches of water which were impossible to detect on the black bitumen, in the dark, and was constantly aware of the dange of aquaplaning off the road.It was a great relief to reach a cold and rainy Alice Springs and I secured the last room( with a heater) in a budget motel-this was no night for camping bravado and my personal endurance tank was verging on empty.
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