The Most Driven Past Country Hotel in Australia - The Tumblong Tavern

(I wrote this for my column in Australian Motorcyclist Magazine a couple of years back. From being a damn fine pub then, it's only got better. If you're a traveller this is a good place to visit, if you're a publican it's a must visit to see just how good a country pub can be!)

When a publican recommends another pub to me, I listen. When three in a row tell me I simply must drop into a certain place, there’s no chance I’m going to miss it.

Mark at Yeoval had told me make sure I visited, and then Theo at Mendooran had underlined that I must not head straight up to Coonabarabran but to detour to the Royal at Binnaway.

After leaving Mendooran I dropped in at the stud farm of a part owner of Protectionist, winner of the Melbourne Cup in 2014 and John and Julie tell me I just have to catch up with Sean and Kylie at the Binnaway Royal

So I head north out from their place and take the eastern turn for some very sweet riding into this town. The mid-morning sun is high and out of my eyes.

As I pull up at the Royal, a cool dude is just heading out on a bicycle, a couple of coffees balanced in one hand. Before I get the riding gear off, he’s back and he’s Sean.

I tell him why I’m in town and we pull up a pew outside, he rolls a durrie, I order some caffeine and pull out the camera and recorder.

Pretty soon Kylie, Sean’s wife, in full chef’s gear joins us. It’s the quiet pre-lunch time and both have time to tell of their passion and that passion is this pub.

They’re from Dubbo and in April 2016, with a background in cafes and catering, they bought the Royal Hotel at Binnaway. They weren’t fazed that it’d been closed for the last six months or that its trading graph before that was a straight line pointed to the south east.

They had other plans, other dreams.

It took them two months to clean the place enough to warrant hanging the “Re-opening Soon” sign   They’d knocked a hole in the wall to serve takeaways, installed a gift shop in one of the back rooms,  landscaped the back area and turned it into a family backyard with more than enough stuff to keep kids of every age occupied.

out front and in June they opened the doors.

The renos are Kylie’s favourite part. She beams, “I love being a transformational rennovationist”.

Deliberately they eschewed gambling and gaming. “places like this are really important because they are a meeting place for people. Where farmers can come in and catch up each week, where everyone can relax, enjoy and feel safe.”

“From the start we were embraced by the community” says Sean and that simple sentence is terribly revealing. Not ‘the town’, not ‘the people’, not ‘the locals’ but ‘the community’.

  

I ask them what their dreams are for this place and Sean points to two empty shops across the road.

“We want to attract enough people from out of town that these shops will open, maybe a café, maybe something else to get money into our community.”

A woman comes by from the school down the road and orders half a dozen various coffees for the teachers. Kylie heads to the kitchen and Sean suggests I take a tour while he morphs into barrista mode.

On one wall there’s a vinyl wallpaper world map and underneath’s an inscription, “You haven’t really been away, unless you've been to Binnaway”. Kylie’s expert hand has added Binnaway is a font identical to that of Sydney and other such minor places.

And then there’s the front bar. It’s without beer taps and may be for a while. There’s a fridge with stubbies and wine but for now  the room is empty ‘cept for the ghost, the shadow of a giant.

In 1977 Peter Finch played his greatest role as Howard Beale in Network opposite Faye Dunaway. This was the ‘Mad as Hell’ movie and it won Finch, who died in January ’77 the first ever

posthumous Best Actor Oscar.

But twenty one years before this, Finch’s star had begun its highest ascendency when he starred in the Australian film, “A Town Like Alice” which won him a BAFTA and he soon followed this up with “The Shiralee”.  This was a story of a battler, his swag and his child, and it was shot in Binnaway.

A central scene involves Finch’s character, Jim Macauley finishing a drink in the front bar, walking out the corner door and getting into one hell of a stink. I’m checking out the bar, imagining the scene when Sean joins me and poses right where Peter Finch stood polishing off his beer.

“Pretty amazing eh?”

It sure is. The bar is pretty much unchanged and the leadlight windows are what you see in the flick. Time here has almost stood still in some sort of wonderful inertia.

Sean’s keen to show me around: to show me what they’ve already done, and what their plans are. It’s underpinned with an appreciation of the past, and understanding of the present and an awareness of the connection.

The Royal at Binnaway is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and always will be. Sean and Kylie are here for the long haul and don't want to be burning out. Most Monday nights you’ll find Sean at the other pub, not scouting customers, not beating his drum, “just hanging with friends. The people who run it are top people and there’s room for us all.”

There’s no accommodation and nothing’s planned but the restaurant is the drawcard -  that and the complete ambience of friendliness, community and just hope and exuberance.  This is an absolute must-stop for any traveller on the A39 between Moree and Dubbo.