No journey up or down the Stuart Highway through the centre of Australia is complete without visiting the Daly Waters Historic Pub.

You will see a few Aussie pubs with some similarities to the Daly Waters, where travellers leave their mark. And by leave their mark, I mean the walls, bar and ceiling and in fact any space available is covered in business cards, hats, bras…you name it, it’s probably hanging there!

But Daly Waters Pub has so much more that draws travellers in. For starters if you’ve never been there, Daly Waters pretty much is ‘the pub’ and a collection of all sorts of bits and pieces in ‘Tim’s Junkyard’ across the road.

This junk has to be seen to be believed though and for a gold coin donation you can get lost in the historic relics small and massive.

Some people drop in to Daly Waters on their way up or down the track, but to get the true experience you need to stay for a night. There are cabins and hotel rooms available and the campground can handle every size rig, and you have the option of powered or non powered sites, all with the use of ablutions.

We went with unpowered and used our own solar backed up battery power, but if the weather is too hot a powered site would have been the go to be able to use air conditioning. Non powered sites were $10 per head, per night and powered $16 p/h.

In unpowered it was described as rack ‘em and stack ‘em, referring to the way all the caravans were slotted in like sardines in a can, but there was enough room in between to not feel too much on top of each other and after all it’s just somewhere to sleep for the night, with everything happening in the pub.

During the afternoon you can browse around or make use of the pools at the back of the pub and book in to have dinner at night. Their specialty is Barra and Beef and you can choose to have just Barramundi or beef, or half and half which gives you both.

In the afternoon and evening the fun all starts with a band in the beer garden, playing before and after all the patrons receive their meals. The dining experience runs like a well oiled machine with staff getting everyone’s meals prepared and called out, (wait to hear your name called and go and collect) with speedy precision. The meal also comes with a selection of fresh salads.

The band playing on the night we were there, were called Australiana and as the name suggest played all Australian music. The trio were an impressive professional crew and included Rod Coe (Slim Dusty’s record producer) on double bass, Lou Bradley (an aria nominated artist) as main vocalist and great story teller and her husband Phil playing amongst other instruments, the banjo. Their repertoire was very extensive and had something to please everyone from country to 80s and 90s Australian artists and even a bit of the Wiggles for the little audience members.

Daly Waters Pub is an authentic Aussie experience that is comfortable and friendly and not to be missed when you’re travelling through Australia and a night of great food and fun to share with fellow travellers.

Oh and Tim the owner is a bit of a well known character too, just wait for his appearance throughout the afternoon, roaming through the pub grounds on his gopher with faithful horse following along behind. Well this is Australia, so having a horse in the pub is no big surprise!

Enjoy!

Glenys