Homebush Hotel, Penarie ... everything you'd want out bush, just not a phone box

When I get to The Homebush Hotel at Penarie, there’s no bugger about except a suss looking bloke having a durrie on the front porch.

This, folks, is Nugget, boss of the joint and he watches me get off Super Ten then disappears inside. By the time I’m at doorway he’s sorted a glass of water and is asking me what I’d like to chase it with.

I grab a Furphy, confident it’ll not be my last for the night.

Nuggett’s into his second year here after turning his back on the ‘smoke’

“I was managing pubs and clubs in Cairns and when I finished with the them I decided to get a real job and headed to Brisbane and stayed with Telstra for 18 years and paid off a house in Hamilton and then bought the blue van. Then I headed down to Wodonga to spend some time with mum and dad who live down there.

Then I got a call from an old mate who had a pub he needed someone to look after at

Corowa so I’d drive from Wodonga to Corowa each day and I did that for about 8 months and then this place came up so I thought, why not?

I ran the pub on my own for 4 or 5 months in 2016 and at Easter good Friday I had a function for 200 people here and I hired a young girl from town to help out

behind the bar.  Anyway I hit my finger to the bone with a butcher’s knife, so I wrapped it all up and people kept rocking up and I’ve never seen it busier here.

So the next morning I went to town and the doctor did this and did that and then said, I’m going to send you down to Bendigo and then they sent me to Melbourne and I had to close the pub for four days because it took me three days to get into surgery down there.

So then I got onto Morgane the French girl and with her coming in we tripled our trade in two weeks and she stayed with us and from that point we kept on another worker. I can’t do this on my own, it’s just getting too popular.

Anyway they had to cut my hand open to get to the wound and I have most of the feeling back into it now but I have trouble grasping, picking things up.

So Morgane came on and then I got Cherie and she’s on maternity leave and I got her from Nyah and I really hope I get her back, she’s the most intuitive barmaid I’ve ever had. She doesn't just keep an eye on drinkers, she watches the whole room, remembers what everyone has and she’s pouring their drinks while they’re still walking to the bar."

I grab another drink as Nugget tells me there’s tea on from six and the pizzas are the best for miles.

  

“The pub’s quietened down and now people, families are happy to bring their kids here for a meal and a catchup with other locals.

I guess the wildest times in recent memory were when Filthy Phil was the publican. He was an Ansett pilot who got paid out big time just before the airline crashed and he cashed in all his shares and decided he wanted different so he came out here and bought the pub.

Most nights by 7 he was asleep on the couch. Anyhow this one Sunday afternoon the shearers and farmers from around the joint were in and this Phil was a very nice bloke but very easily taken advantage of, and the young locals especially knew how to exploit his niceness.

This afternoon Phil had had his share of drink and there were this couple of gas bottles lying around and someone put these two little fat boys in the phone box that used to be out front of the pub and smashed one of the bottom panes of glass. (to get a clear view of ‘em).

Then they got a 3030 out of their ute  and set up a chair just inside the door of the pub and took some shots at the cylinders.

Blew the bloody thing into the sky! The cylinders went up and the phone box disintegrated!

Not many who were here that day’ll forget that real quick.”

  

We’ve been joined by Dale, who lives pretty much permanently in one of the pub’s donga cabins. He works at the firewood mill just up the road a bit and he’s a fan of Nugget’s pub running skills.

“I’ve been here when 40/50 people here are wanting meals and he’s here on his own and he’s running for an hour or so, literally running There’s no stopping him and he’s also bringing drinks.

Soon after a couple of filthy Frenchmen turn up to get some takeaways. They’re also mill workers and Dale’s glad to see them.

“Those two just rocked up a few months back and made a nuisance of themselves and I could relate to that so we’ve become mates and after they’ve headed out he explains:

“They both just rocked up a few months back and made a nuisance of themselves and I could relate to that so we’ve become mates. There’s usually three of them but one was taken out last week.

“The splitters we’ve got, you have a tub which holds all the wood and you split the wood and it goes down a shoot and up this conveyor belt and then drops onto the pile of wood. There was this bit of wood stuck between the belt and the drum and this French guy leant in to clear it.  He put his hand in to clear it and it grabbed his arm, dislocated his shoulder, tore the skin off his arm. Tore everything. This was last Monday. We had a meeting yesterday about it to discuss safety and they had a copy of all the instructions that the workers get and I was tempted to take the instructions out of the hands of the manager and give it to the other French kid we have who was there and ask him if he could read it. I’m fucking sure he couldn't. “

We move on to more pleasant topics and Dale tells of running into a lean and blonde Dean Lukin in Port Lincoln a while back and then it’s back to pub talk and how the place in PL burnt down in, well, happy circumstances for several of the locals there.

Carla pulls up with her two very active sons and Nugget leaves me with Dale. He soon returns with a middie of something.

Carla, thanks him: “I’ve never actually managed to get inside the front door without getting a drink. He sees me pulling up and he’s pulling my drink and that doesn't matter how busy the place is."

They’re from a property just north on the Ivanhoe road and we talk soon turns to water.

“A lot of us rely on rainwater for household purposes and we ran out a month or so back so now we cart town water in from Hay at about 400 litres at a time and the shire committed to taking treated out to farms but because the maps don't classify us as in drought they don't cart it out to us. We are listed as drought affected but not in drought and so it’s all red tape from bureaucrats who don't know what’s going on out here.”

There’s a bit of a storm circling as we talk, a rainbow slowly emerges in the east and I wonder for the millionth time just why politicians in the cities can’t find a way of understanding the true challenges out here.

Carla heads out with her sons, Dale heads down to his cabin, I polish off a pizza which was home constructed and first rate and throw up my tent out front of the pub, just near where a certain phone box used to stand.