From one roadhouse / pub to another! The Barkly Homestead is looking pretty polished – from what I’ve read, it’s essentially brand new, after some significant renovations over the past few months or so to get ready for this dry season. I think it was planned, but it certainly became more necessary after they got hit really hard by floods and storms in December 2022. The result is a very nice looking roadhouse for the first and last pub in the NT. And the motel room we’re in tonight feels basically brand new.
It turns out there’s really not a lot on the road between Daly Waters and Barkly Homestead. We were out of the car very little today!
However, we did spend quite a bit of time at Daly Waters before we left. This morning, we made sure we left our mark at Daly Waters, which it has become so famous for (starting with plenty of bras hanging around the pub from as early as the 70s, and now extending to photos, cards, hats, old name badges – and so much more) – we took a polaroid photo of ourselves out the front and managed to find a spot to stick it on a doorframe. So if you ever drop into Daly Waters, make sure you find us – it’s just on your left as you walk in the main door of the pub.
Last night, the owner, Tim, shared a bunch of info with everyone about the history of the place, including that there was a heritage walk you could take from the pub down to the Daly Waters Aerodrome. So this morning, we did part of that! We went to see Stuart’s tree, which is the remains of a tree that it is assumed John McDouall Stuart carved his initials into some 160 years ago. We also saw an old flying fox that runs across the Daly Waters River – the initial owners of the Daly Waters general store and post office (Bill and Henrietta Pierce) built it because they were sick of trying to carry supplies across the flooded river from the aerodrome to their general store / post office, and no one would build them a bridge! Eventually, at the end of WWII, soldiers finishing up deployment in Daly Waters built them a bridge – which apparently they still need to use today in times of a big wet season at Daly Waters!
The highlight for me though was the Daly Waters Aerodrome. It’s considered the first international airport in Australia, and it played a significant part in the development of the Northern Territory and Australia’s aviation history. It formed a crucial part of a plane’s journey in a time when planes didn’t have the range to make it all the way across Australia. There was so much information in the original 1930s hangar, and it was wonderful to make the link from that hangar back to the Daly Waters general store and post office that we’d just heard and read about – Bill and Henrietta would meet the planes at the hangar, and passengers would go back to the Daly Waters house for refreshments with Henrietta, while Bill and a few of his workers would have 25 minutes to unpack and repack the plane with cargo and a new mail run!
Unfortunately that was the end of most of the interesting stuff today. We cruised down the Stuart Highway until the Three Ways Roadhouse where we got petrol and had some lunch. And from there, it was only a couple of hours along the Barkly Highway to here!
We’re currently perched in the restaurant doing our diary writing, listening to a bit of live music again, and I’m enjoying a happy hour red wine. We’ll have some dinner soon before heading back to our motel room to watch the Swans play tonight!
The last leg to Mt Isa tomorrow!
