‘First customer in three days’: Lonely reality of outback pub

It’s in the middle of nowhere and can go days without a patron, so how has this outback pub managed to survive more than 130 years?

The sand-ravaged Mannahill Hotel 150km short of the NSW border presents as a stark and lonely presence at the edge of the Barrier Highway on the way to Broken Hill.

The rendered stone structure stands defiantly on a vast, dead-flat desert plain spotted with saltbush and the occasional mulga tree, the pub languishing as a reminder of just how despairingly desolate the outback out here truly is.

This South Australian frontier hotel materialised in 1889 as the result of a gold discovery in the district and was once only accessible through a painful and laborious 100 mile steam train journey from Peterborough to the southwest.

Today the pub survives as an unexpected yet welcome watering-hole for outback highway travellers.

Publican Di Highet emerges from somewhere at the back of the hotel to serve at the bar, announcing to us that we’re the first customers she’s had in three days.

Di Highet runs the isolated Mannahill Hotel on the Barrier Highway. Picture: Toby Zerna

Keen to yarn with visitors from the outside world we learn her passion is transport – in particular trains and Mini Minors – pictures of which adorn the pub’s walls.

I question how the pub manages to survive at all, to which Di says it’s chiefly due to occasionally passing tourists who stop by.

The only tourists I’ve seen out here in the desert are driving petrol and diesel-fuelled four wheel-drives towing caravans.

I ask her if she’s seen any electric vehicles out here. She tells me about an electric car owner who’d run out of charge at her hotel, angry that she didn’t have an outside power point.

“I didn’t know you could charge them from a power point and told him I didn’t have one. He kept saying ‘Do you want me to break down out here?’ over and over. It really upset me … as if it was my fault.”

As we head for the NSW border we wonder how long outposts like Mannahill will survive when diesel, petrol and long distance outback travel are things of the past.

Warren Brown is touring outback Australia in a RAM ahead of the national Bush Summit. Picture: Toby Zerna

Rugged & progressive

Broken Hill is the hard-bitten, wild-western mining town that has always marched to its own time — although within NSW it operates on South Australian time, half an hour behind the rest of the state.

But the city’s rugged reputation as a rough and ready mining frontier is changing, now renowned as a progressive cultural hub in the desert.

It is flourishing due to sellout events such as the Mundi Mundi Bash and the Broken Heel festival, sculpture, painting and of course the motion picture industry — the town having hosted the production of more than 300 films.

GP Steven Grillett has opened up a practice at the local cinema in Broken Hill. Picture: Toby Zerna

Yet recently the town’s only movie theatre, The Silver City Cinema, was about to permanently close when its operators of more than 40 years decided to call it a day.

The 380-seat cinema was then unexpectedly bought and saved by the Broken Hill Musicians Club, a registered club set up in 1919 by members of a mining union brass band.

It was a move lauded by the Broken Hill community, Musicians Club general manager Michael Boland telling me, “I was stopped by a gentleman in the street who was almost in tears — his autistic son’s greatest delight was to watch movies at the cinema and without the theatre he didn’t know what to do,” he says.

“He was so grateful.”

Not only did the club then set about upgrading the theatre with the latest 4K projection equipment, they decided to set up a doctor’s practice for the community in the building.

Michael says locals had previously waited up to 10 weeks for a doctor’s appointment and were forced to travel hours away for treatment.

GP Steven Grillett says he now has more than 800 patients. The day his surgery opened the queue ran down the street and around the corner.

“There was a community demand and community need and we were able to fill that void,” Dr Grillett said.

Marie Lawson and partner Adam Watson run The Shearer’s Cook cafe in Silverton. Picture: Toby Zerna

Mad Max land

In Mad Max country at Silverton, about an hour’s drive north of Broken Hill, an entire family has moved in to kickstart The Shearer’s Cook Cafe just up the road from The Silverton Hotel and next door to the Mad Max Museum.

Having only bought the vacant, historic brick building in November, proprietors Marie Lawson and partner Adam Watson decided to take the plunge to start a cafe in one of the most remote corners of Australia.

The Mundi Mundi Bash attracts thousands of people each year. Picture: Matt Williams

Their biggest challenge is only weeks away with the Mundi Mundi Bash at Silverton. The annual rock spectacular has already sold 12,000 tickets.

I ask Marie if they’re ready for it.

“No,” she says laughing — albeit nervously.

“But we’ll give it a red-hot crack. We’re pumped, it’ll bring so much goodness to Silverton and hopefully support family businesses like mine.”

Originally published as ‘First customer in three days’: Lonely reality of outback pub