A Stop at One of Queensland’s Most Isolated Pubs

It’s funny how opportunities present themselves.

Some people network, others update their LinkedIn profile. I apparently repair cash registers in pubs that have been waiting for customers since the horse-and-cart era.

Will and I left Winton this morning, continuing our slow crawl towards Boulia. Roughly halfway sits the Middleton Hotel, one of the most isolated pubs in Queensland and, judging by first impressions, possibly one of the most patient.

The pub dates back to the Cobb & Co. days, when Middleton was one of the famous “Nine Pillars”, changing stations where exhausted horses were swapped for fresh ones on the four-day mail run between Winton and Boulia. Coaches came through here from 1895 until 1915, carrying mail, passengers and, I imagine, people already complaining that the journey was taking too long.

The settlement itself has almost disappeared. The hall sits abandoned, the surrounding buildings are long gone, and all that’s really left is the pub, a campground and an enormous amount of sky.

We pulled into the free camp across the road just after midday.

“Perfect,” I said. “Cold beer and a pub lunch.” The pub, however, appeared to disagree with this plan.

Not a soul.

We wandered around, admired the old buildings, peered through dusty windows and eventually wandered back to the van.

“Maybe they open at two.” Will nodded in the way partners do when they’ve learnt arguing achieves nothing.

Two o’clock came.

Nothing.

Over the next few hours, several caravans arrived hopefully, slowed to inspect the pub, then quietly drove away again, presumably assuming civilisation had finally ended.

We stayed put.

There are only so many times you can reorganise a van before deciding the only sensible option is to open a fresh box of goon.

By five o’clock we’d lowered our expectations considerably. “If they’re not open by now,” I said, “we’re having soup.”

Just then we noticed a couple of caravanners heading towards the pub.

The doors were open, and like two dehydrated wildebeest spotting water, Will and I marched across the road.

Inside, the place looked as though very little had changed since Cobb & Co. stopped calling in. The timber bar had absorbed more stories than any therapist ever could, and the stools looked as though generations of stockmen had slowly sanded them smooth with their trousers.

“Two XXXX Golds, thanks.”

The woman behind the bar smiled apologetically.

“I can pour them, but I can’t take cash. The till won’t open.”

Another woman already sitting at the bar explained she was only minding the place while her sister, the owner, was away until Saturday.

Fair enough. “I’ll pay by card.”

While she wrestled with the cash register, I recognised the expression immediately. It was the universal face of someone rapidly approaching the point where technology gets thrown into a paddock.

“I’ve worked in a few pubs,” I said. “Mind if I have a look?”

She shrugged. “Can’t make it any worse.”

The register turned out to be an ancient Casio that looked less like a point-of-sale system and more like something your Year 10 maths teacher would have used. It kept flashing an error code: E10.

I’d seen something similar years ago. Usually it meant the receipt paper wasn’t feeding properly.

After a bit of poking around, opening compartments that hadn’t seen daylight in years and saying “Ah-ha!” far more confidently than I actually felt, I suddenly heard the drawer spring open.

Success.

I was promoted from customer to local hero in under three minutes.

Over the next couple of beers we swapped travel stories. Where we’d been, where we were heading. The usual conversations that happen when strangers meet in country pubs and realise everyone has time.

Then, completely out of nowhere, she asked if I’d ever worked behind a bar.

“Quite a few.”

“Would you be interested in running this place for about a week?”

I laughed.

She didn’t.

She explained she was heading home the following day and needed someone to look after the pub until her sister returned.

Will could help in the kitchen. “We’ll keep the menu simple,” she said. “One meal each night.”

She’d known me for less than two hours.

Apparently fixing an ageing cash register is the rural Queensland equivalent of an executive recruitment process.

“Sleep on it,” she said. “Come back at eight tomorrow morning. I’ll make you breakfast and coffee, and we’ll ring my sister.”

So, just like that, we may have accidentally found ourselves temporary publicans in one of Australia’s most isolated pubs.

It wasn’t exactly part of the itinerary.

Then again, neither was a failing power steering pump, a slow puncture or drinking boxed wine while waiting five hours for a pub to open.

If Will agrees, we’ll spend the next week pulling beers instead of kilometres. It’ll pay for fuel, our Boulia race tickets, help cover the van repairs and almost certainly provide enough material for several more stories.

Sometimes the road gives you exactly what you need, and sometimes it just asks whether you know how to fix a cash register.