Daly Waters

April 26

Staying a night at The Daly Waters Pub, about 300 km south of Katherine and north of Tennant Creek, was one of life's more extraordinary experiences. It was one of those bras hanging from the roof kind of pubs (though I confess, in my ignorance, I did not know that bras-hanging-from-the-roof pubs existed before I arrived here). Possibly not the best place for a lesbian couple to stay in - so we chose not to have a free and frank discussion about ladies who like ladies with the drunk bloke who was keen on my partner when we first arrived. Instead we retreated nervously to our room like the inner-city-latte-sipping-chardonnay-swilling-Geelong-barracking girls that we are. Our room was 'deluxe' which meant the bathroom door fells on the bed and that it had windows that didn't open. During our time in the Territory we stayed in a few of these hot boxes that took an extraordinary amount of electricity to keep airconditioned.

That night we had a - good - meal at the pub. I can unreservedly recommend the damper. The Northern Territory is dire when it comes to food so this is a high compliment. Anyway, I got the impression that a stream of English and Irish backpackers went through the place, serving beer under the corrugated iron roof in searing heat before they collapsed in exhaustion from too much heat, beer and, possibly, too much backpacker sex (it's a particular type of sex, in case you were wondering). I chatted to one such girl expecting her to tell me she hated the job, but she loved it. 'You get up early, work, have a dip in the pool, and then drink.' Indeed. My partner spoke at some length to a bloke called Fred (that's her chatting to him in the photo above). He denounced Greenies, my partner said she was one, and then they talked aimably about this at some length. Fred had worked building roads across the whole top end for forty years or so - since he was about 12. His wife had been a nurse who'd travelled through the Territory to various communities. All of their work was done in the dry season because in the wet too many areas were cut off. His wife had recently died and now he lived alone in one of the hot boxes (yes, too small to swing a cat) and took his meals and beer at the pub. Fred was frustrated by land rights because he'd had access to so many areas across the north of Australia over the decades that it seemed to him strange that he now had to apply for a permit to visit some of these lands. His hobby was photography. His wife, he told us, had been a great woman.

The name Daly Waters was given to a series of natural springs by John McDouall Stuart during his third attempt to cross Australia from south to north, in 1861-2. He named the springs after the then new Governor of South Australia, Sir Dominick Daly. Stuart's Tree has an 'S' carved into it by Stuart during his journey. We visited this tree, which has been dug up from wherever it grew and stuck in some concrete in the middle of nowhere not far from the pub. I stared at it for some time but confess could not distinguish the S from the weathering in the wood. Alot of the white 'attractions' we saw on this trip were a bit tragic like this and seemed to reinforce the tenuous nature of white man's relationship with these areas. That said, the Daly Waters Airfield, which dates back to 1930 and was a World War II Airforce base has a certain something - and is still home to an original Qantas hangar (1965).

Its 'exhibits' though, are left open to the elements and falling into disrepair.

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