The William Creek Hotel, South Australia.
A Pub 100 Miles from Nowhere
It Appears Like An Oasis In The Australian Outback
A pub unlike all others sits in a region of red sand dunes and endless flat deserts in the Australian outback. It is the William Creek Hotel, and here the bartender serves up the only beers for hundreds of miles.
“We’re the most remote pub in Australia,” claims Peter Moore, who co-owns the William with his wife, Rosslyn. He bases this bold assumption on sheer population density. Within a 75,000-square-mile radius of this hotel/pub – an area roughly the size of Missouri – only 22 people make their home.
Which raises an obvious question: How tough is it running a bar in such isolation? “Ahh, you learn to adapt,” says Moore, a city slicker originally from Melbourne. “For example, right now we’re out of rum because we had a heavy week. It’ll be like that for a fortnight. But if we really need something, we can fly our plane to Coober Pedy. Put it this way: The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.”
This story first appeared in Adventure Journal.
Set in the middle of the 18,068-square-mile Anna Creek cattle station, the William is actually a way station for intrepid desert wanderers. Most arrive via the Oodnadatta Track, a 400-mile dirt road through stark, undulating plains that links Marree and Marla via Oodnadatta. The closest town, Coober Pedy, is 100 miles west.
“We get about 150 a day in the winter, from all over the place – America, Germany, Holland, you name it,” says Tony Donnellaan, the William’s lively bartender/pilot. “But in the summer, when it’s really hot, we see only 2 to 20 people a day.”
No one is quite sure when the first patrons sauntered through the pub’s door. “Supposedly, it opened in 1883,” explains Moore. “But it was just a sly [illegal] grog shop, selling alcohol to the camel trains that went up the Oodnadatta Track before the rail line was built.”
In fact, the William did not become a licensed pub until after World War II. Since then, it has evolved as a sprawling series of sheds, low and sturdy enough to withstand the area’s fierce winds. Entrance is through a fly-screen door, which opens to a veranda running the length of the hotel, a virtual fly trap that denies all but the most persistent bugs access to the bar.
And the bar? Oh yes, one must forget the actual bar – a truly holy place, complete with broad oak countertop, smoothed by years of heat, beer and sweat. Strange items of nostalgia, including a bar filled with donations for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, provide the interior design.
Yet to truly understand this pub, one must experience it during the weekend, when the ringers (or ranchers) from Anna Creek are off work and ready for beer. Lots of beer. “Yeah we work hard,” says 26-year-old ringer Brett Smith. “That’s why we drink so much.”
To drink a stubby (or bottle) of beer with these men – who wear traditional tall, wide-brimmed cowboy hats and belt buckles the size of small pizzas – is to encounter true grit in the outback. Working for Anna Creek, the ringers earn only $275 a week rounding up cattle. It’s a job that often results in injury. Despite the hardships, most ringers say they wouldn’t live anywhere else.
“I love it out here because there’s room to roam,” says 21-year-old ringer Dion Khah. “You can go as far as you want, and there’s just sand dunes, dust and storms. You can just keep going.”
Not only does the land seem to stretch on forever, but the sky boggles the imagination as well. In the wee hours of a moonless February night, as the dingoes begin to howl, Donnellaan sits in the hotel’s backyard, admiring this celestial gift. Above, an almost unreal sky full of countless stars stretches in every direction.
“The first time I saw this, I couldn’t believe it,” Donnellaan says. “It was like someone suddenly turned on the lights. You know, we only have 18 million people in Australia, and most of them live in the cities. At the most, maybe .0001 percent of them will ever come to the William Creek Hotel. Most people never see this place, never see how beautiful it is. That’s why it’s so special. It’s rare.” - Andrew Tarica