| ABC Northern Territory | Feature Index | On The Roadhouse On the Roadhouse In the hottest weeks toward the end of the year 2002, Chips Mackinolty and I bailed out of Darwin and headed off down the Stuart Highway. We were on a mission, determined to sample the steak sandwiches at every roadhouse with a 24 hour wayside inn licence in the Northern Territory. Oases of food, fuel, liquid refreshments, toilet facilities, varying standards of accommodation and ubiquitous oddities, the Territory's roadhouses are well spread out. Along the Stuart Highway, which runs right through the guts of the continent from Darwin to Adelaide, you'll find twenty such fuel stops in the 2,000 kilometres between the Arafura Sea and South Australia's northern border. Out to the west… there are a couple of roadhouses on the Victoria Highway heading into Western Australia. There's one run by women on the single-lane Buchanan Highway in the heart of the cattle country around Top Springs… a couple on the Tanami Road, one with a population of two 600 k's up that dusty track at Rabbit Flat … and a couple more on the Lassetter Highway en route to Uluru. Out to the east, we found sustenance in roadhouses along the Arnhem and Kakadu highways, out on the Carpentaria Highway during the first rains for eight months at the Heartbreak Hotel, and up the Barkly from which the tar rolls endlessly into Queensland. Along the way, we explored aspects of life in these isolated outposts, interviewing staff and travellers and gathering the sounds of the road and the weird & wonderful creatures we encountered. - Andrew McMillan.
- Hi-Way Inn
For many years the Hi-Way Inn, at the junction of the Stuart and Carpentaria highways 350 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, held little attraction for the weary traveller. [ more ]
 Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Daly Waters
Off the Stuart Highway a few kilometres north of the Hi-Way Inn, stands the historic Daly Waters pub, one of the quintessential outback Australian roadhouses. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Pine Creek - 1
Since the 1870s, gold mining has been the focus of activity, in Pine Creek, 213 kilometres south of Darwin. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Pine Creek - 2
Working in the front bar of the Pine Creek pub, Sandy Busuttil has just about seen it all. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Mt Ebenezer
Out on the Lassetter Highway, en route to Uluru, in country that’s remarkably flat, the curiously named Mt Ebenezer is one of the few Aboriginal-owned roadhouses in the Northern Territory. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Wycliffe Well
Many Northern Territory roadhouses find a gimmick to distinguish themselves from the next fuel stop up the road. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Kulgera
Since taking over the management of the roadhouse at Kulgera, 22 kilometres north of the South Australian border on the Stuart Highway, Tony Braithwaite has witnessed some very odd behaviour. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Heartbreak Hotel
On the junction of the Carpentaria and Tablelands highways 106 kilometres south-west of Borroloola, the Heartbreak Hotel is also known as Cape Crawford, though it’s been 10,000 years since this cape has seen the sea. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Aileron
A true blue bush character, Greg Dick has been managing roadhouses in the Northern Territory for forty years. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Aileron - 2
It’s not often that when charges of assaulting police reach court, the prosecution has to concede that the weapons in question have been eaten. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Renner Springs
Leaving the lush coast of southern New South Wales for the isolation of the Northern Territory’s cattle country may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but for John and Judy Blackman it was an opportunity to have an adventure. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Alice Springs - Liz Martin
Giving haircuts, washing clothes and taking phone messages for passing truckies are not in the job description for most barmaids, but the nature of working in a roadhouse makes a fuel-and-feed stop a home away from home. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Audio format
- Tilmouth Well
On the edge of the Tanami Desert 220 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, the roadhouse at Tilmouth Well on the Tanami Track reminded our intrepid explorers of a well-kept ski chalet. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Audio format
- Ti Tree
You can buy booze just about anywhere these days, but have you ever had your spirits served from a coffin? [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Highway Robbery
One of the unexpected and yet intriguing aspects of our research concerned the issue of highway robbery and the sorts of things that travellers steal from roadhouses and tourist resorts. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Roadhouse Pets and Pests
Territory roadhouses boast a peculiar array of pets, from raptors to buffalo, kangaroos, crocodiles, camels, donkeys, dingos, pigs and galahs. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Roadhouse Romance
There's never a dull moment behind the scenes in the roadhouses of the Northern Territory, especially when it comes to blossoming of outback romance with the influx of overseas backpackers in the peak tourist season between May and September. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
- Sheilas in the scrub
In what is ostensibly a blokes' domain, some of the most isolated roadhouses in the Northern Territory are run exclusively by women. [ more ]
Listen in Windows Media format | Listen
in Real Media format
  On The Roadhouse is a series produced as an initiative of the Regional Production FundDate published: 21/11/2008  Email this page
|
