Daly Waters Pub

Daly Waters sits on the Stuart Highway between Katherine and Tennant Creek, a settlement of a few dozen people whose pub, licensed since the 1930s, has become one of the best-known in the outback. Its interior is entirely covered: hats, bras, thongs, licence plates, banknotes, business cards and foreign currency nailed, stapled and taped to every surface by travellers passing through over decades. A beef and barramundi barbecue runs nightly in the dry season, usually with live music, and the caravan park behind fills with vans. Nearby, the Daly Waters airfield was a refuelling stop on the first international air route to Australia and later a wartime base, with a hangar surviving.

Highlights

• The covered walls - decades of objects left by travellers filling the interior.
• The nightly barbecue - beef and barramundi with live music in the dry season.
• The historic airfield - the 1930s aviation stop and wartime hangar nearby.
• The caravan park - the crowded overnight stop behind the pub.

When to go

May to September, the dry season, when the pub runs its full programme and the highway is busy with travellers heading north or south; the wet brings heat, humidity and a much quieter pub. Evening meals book out in peak season.

Things to know

It is a stop rather than a destination, and its fame means it can feel like a production. The caravan park is crowded and basic in the peak dry. Facilities are limited to the pub and a small store, and the nearest town is hours away.

Nearby

Katherine lies north; Tennant Creek is far south on the highway.