Beer break from asylum-seekers at Tracks

THERE wasn't a fascinator in sight yesterday at Tracks Tavern on Christmas Island, the bar where regulars use their own key and an honour system when the owner is away.

THERE wasn't a fascinator in sight yesterday at Tracks Tavern on Christmas Island, the bar where regulars use their own key and an honour system when the owner is away.

Publican David Billcliff's Melbourne Cup celebrations are a fixture on the remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, and yesterday sunburnt workers gathered under shadecloth to watch the race at 11am local time.

"This pub is beautiful, mate," said Ed Hyde, a detention centre guard from Darwin who had a big win on Shocking. "Its atmosphere, the mateship, it's the best."

The presence on the island of 1156 asylum-seekers -- and the more than 200 workers who mind them -- has sent rents rocketing, but a can of beer is still $3 at Tracks.

And while the island's restaurants now brim with professionals from the mainland in their closed-in shoes and long pants, thongs and shorts remain the Tracks uniform.

The bar is the epicentre of island gossip, and is central to a good deal of collective malcontent over just about everything emanating from Canberra.

But none of it was on display yesterday as workers sneaked in for a beer and a punt on the Cup.

There was no big screen, just an average-sized television.

Mr Billcliff, known as Barney to his patrons, likes it that way. "I think the people make a bar and it's a friendly place where the workers are," he said.

Traditionally Tracks Tavern has been the pub of choice for the island's labourers and tradesmen, and for workers from the phosphate mine, which is still the biggest employer of locals with 135 resident staff.

But increasingly in the past year it has gained a following among the fly-in, fly-out workers who guard detainees at the detention centre.

Allan Davis, 52, is among the detention centre workers who drink at Tracks because it feels like a local.

But after nine years on Christmas Island, Mr Billcliff is calling it quits, and earlier this year he put Tracks on the market.

He reckons he will probably go home to New Zealand if he can find a buyer.

The bar's remoteness could be one reason it has not sold quickly, and some regulars point out that another could be the blasts of dust from the mine workshop next door that cover drinkers every dry season.

The bar is nestled in front of jungle, and its dedicated patrons accept that giant poisonous centipedes will drop on them mid-sentence every now and again.

But Tracks' charms include that it is the only pub in the world that lies in the direct path of an annual red crab migration. Within weeks the floor of the outdoor bar will be alive with red crabs making their way to the sea to spawn.