“How embarrassing,’’ he murmurs at the bartender hastily provides a range of perfectly legitimate excuses for the sad state of affairs, including the absence of a key chef.

So we settle for the barramundi which is perfectly adequate but Pickering, the fourth-generation cattleman, still clearly has his heart set on a rump steak, even if the yearning is possibly subconscious.

Because, even before the food arrives, he’s giving me instructions on how to catch a mickey bull (wild bull) in the Gulf of Carpentaria scrub using little else but a horse, guile and guts.

It is, in a purely theoretical sense, a simple exercise.

You chase the bull on your horse, wait until the bull slows its pace, dismount the said horse still in motion, wrestle the bull to the ground, take him home, brand him and make him part of your herd.

“Won’t the bull try to gore you?’’ I ask timidly.

“You need him to come around and horn you because then you’ve got him off balance, and that’s how you get him on the ground,’’ he answers.

“Oh there’s a knack in it,’’ he continues, with some relish.

“And the knack is in not getting killed?’’ I venture.

“That’s right, that’s a plus.’’

To say Pickering is the last of his breed might be a little melodramatic.

But he is.

He’s 54, it’s about 30 years since he wrestled a bull, and he’s finding the 21st Century so infuriating with its “Welcome to Country’’ ceremonies and preferred pronouns and “Risk Assessed Management Plans,’’ (which would preclude the chasing of mickey bulls) and irritating words like “inclusion’’ and “resilience’’ that, come next election, he’s throwing in the towel, walking off into the sunset after two decades as a councillor, and more than half that time as Mayor.

“I’ve had a gutful of the bullshit,’’ he explains in that direct, cheerful manner which seems to be his preferred way of dealing with the world.

Pickering is not bitter. He’s a genial and erudite dining companion, alive with funny and insightful observations about life in the country he loves and deeply proud of what Gulf councils, with their roots firmly planted in the communities they serve, can and do achieve.

It’s the wider world that’s closing in on him, and he hates it.

He moved out of his beloved cattle industry years ago and in retirement will keep an eye on the family’s successful earth moving business which, he freely admits, was the product of his wife Leonie’s dedication and perseverance over the years while he served the community he loves.

His great-great grandfather came up from Muttaburra to make a start in the cattle industry sometimes in the late 19th Century and if the Pickering family have proven anything to the world since around the year 1890 or thereabouts, it’s that they’re tough enough to carve out a life in the wilderness of the Gulf country.

Just don’t ever call them “resilient.’’

“Resilient!’’ Pickering barks .

“You know, if there is a word that people hate up here most of all it’s “resilience!’’

At one point members of his family owned 11 properties, they played a role in shaping the Queensland livestock industry, building up herds of Brahman cattle, even (despite his predilection for hand to horn combat with wild bulls) helping to usher in a more humanitarian and sensitive approach to handling the ornery Brahmans.

And if you’re thinking “wealthy squattocracies’’ it’s instructive to note his mother who still lives in the town worked for more than two decades in the kitchen of the very hotel we’re eating in to help the family make ends meet.

Pickering admits he still has things to learn, but “resilience’’ is not one of them. The word annoys the hell out of him, as if he were an infant in need of a cooing mother.

Resilience, in his view, is what a neighbouring gulf resident displayed when he fired up his bulldozers and cleared nearly 3000ha of land to create a massive agriculture precinct to rival the Ord River Scheme in Western Australia and grow, among other things, chickpeas _ a product the Indian subcontinent can’t seem to get enough of.

That man would have been lauded as a Queensland hero 50 years ago but is now portrayed as an arch villain after he copped a $450,000 fine in the Cairns Magistrate Court for illegal land clearing.

“He works flat out growing food for God’s sake and they do that to him,’’ says Pickering, who shakes his head at genuine wonderment at what appears to him a growing trend, spawned in Australian inner cities, to suck the life out of primary industry _ to insist that the natural world take precedence over food production.

Resilience is what Gulf residents display every year when they’re cut off from the rest of the world in the wet season.

Just down the road, where he takes me in his four wheel drive the next day, is a single lane bridge across the Gilbert River which resembles many you would find on the back roads of Queensland.

But this bridge is on “Route One’’ – the main highway in and out of the Gulf – and during the wet season it floods leaving thousands of people without supplies including food and medicine because the trucks can’t come in.

Each year Pickering goes cap and hand to both the state and federal authorities for help to build a higher-level bridge, and each year he’s told “no’’ because it costs too much.

It does cost a lot. It might cost more than $30 million. But there is the matter of priorities.

Local state MP Robbie Katter has noted in the Queensland parliament that a sum in the vicinity of $30 million has been spent on a bridge to ensure cassowaries can safely cross the road in North Queensland.

And that, in the world of the cassowary, might be considered a laudable government initiative if the cassowary could figure out how to use the bridge which, by most accounts, it hasn’t.

“Look, everyone up here understands there are disadvantages in living in a remote area, and you have to accept that,’’ Pickering says.

“But things like this bridge, which impacts the lives of thousands of people every year, come down to basic human rights.

“And it is not as if this place doesn’t contribute anything to the national GDP.’’

As for the “Welcome to Country’’ ceremonies, well, he won’t have them in his council meetings.

“You know I’m going to write that,’’ I say.

“You go ahead and write it,’’ Pickering answers.

“I’ve got a nephew who is Aboriginal, I have other family members who identify as Aboriginal, I grew up with Aboriginal people, I befriended Aboriginal people and that Welcome to Country stuff is all pure bullshit.’’

He is utterly convinced the huge majority of Australians would understand how people whose families have lived on a piece of country for 100 years might feel a little confronted by having someone “welcome’ them on a regular basis to the place they already live.

Meal finished, it’s an eight out of 10, partly because I’m, hungry after the drive from Cairns and partly because the people behind the bar are so charming and attentive, adding an extra sheen to the atmospherics of the pub which, in 1887 when it opened its doors, was just part of a thriving metropolis which stretched for kilometres

This now far-flung town was once a central part of Queensland life, the fourth largest settlement in the state.

Its massive growth was fuelled by the gold which still resides in the hills surrounding the town, and which Pickering believes will soon be the target of the high-tech miners who are poised to exploit a rapidly rising gold price which has surged nearly 25 per cent in the past year alone.

The Gulf, with its wet season storms and wild bulls and raging rivers, is Pickering’s own version of Eden.

“We go over to Port Douglas for a holiday most years and it’s great, I always enjoy it’’ he says.

“But, quite honestly, I love this place – I simply could not live anywhere else.’’