Royal Hotel, Mt Hope where even the wildlife is friendly

Dog Days

So anyway when I rock up to the Royal at Mt Hope Super Ten’s ambient temp gauge is showing 43C.  It's somehow fitting that at the end of a scorcher in the middle of our dog days of summer, I’m met by a blue heeler resting in the doorway of the pub.

Down the side, two women are having a durry in the cool shade beside the outside dunnies. The dog gets up, grabs a battered soccer ball and sits back down.

And looks at me, then at the ball. At me and then the ball. It’s not some guard dog weighing up my threat to its home. It’s trying to sort whether I’m a player.

I’ve seen that look before.  From a hundred dogs in five score pubs.  It’s not a look to be ignored! 

So I walk slowly up with eyes averted from the heeler at the doorstep. And do my best Tim Cahill cross kick. Blue grabs the pill in its teeth and returns it. And there’s that look again.

I dump my gear on a seat outside. I’m suddenly centre forward and the dog’s the goalie. Not a single shot gets past. There’s ground saves off to the side, high diving saves and when I aim straight at its head, there’s not a flinch, just open jaws protecting the open goal.

Eventually my riding gear’s on the spare seat and I’m more thirsty than playful so I head inside. The ball, with attached dog is close behind.

The bar’s empty but the cool is welcome enough and then a glowing bloke in a hat that looks like it was the dog’s last toy fronts. He introduces himself as ‘Wazza’, the dog as ‘Namoi’  (“because it was a gift from a mate in Narrabri”) and what would I like to drink?

I put the cameras on the bar, suck in some of the amber he brings and we get chatting.  Wazza, along with his partner, Tilly, one of the women down the side when I arrived runs this place – have been since January 2017.

The chat flows easily, as he details leaving his home in Injune Qld in ’93 after a messy marriage breakup, spending 20 years in a pub in Dubbo, followed by 16 months with Tilly in a town I’d best not name after his description of it as, “full of druggos, bludgers, thieves and people with no money.”

In their misery they spotted an advert for this place on Gumtree. It’d been sold on December 22^nd 2016 to a bloke he knew from Dubbo, so they answered the ad and got the gig.

This is the third time I’ve been to the Royal at Mt Hope. The first time was good but it was a few years ago now and then in mid-2016 I lobbed again early one evening after a nine hour ride.  Walked into the bar and at one end a woman behind the bar and a bloke on the other side were looking over some financial papers. So, I stood and waited in this empty bar to be noticed, acknowledged, maybe even served but hey, that wasn't too high on their priorities.

Anyway, bereft of any canine distractions, I checked out the bar,   And took my eventual drink out front.  None of the regular passing trucks stopped. Drivers would give a wave as they kicked the gears for the descent down the hill, but during my two beers none of the couple of dozen rigs pulled up in the area across the road.

allegedly the only solid concrete bar in Australia and waited for them to finish.

The brace of beers had brought on hunger so I headed in and asked for a menu. “Geez your timing’s shot mate. Kitchen closed at six”. It was now eight minutes past. 

Are you kidding me? I’ve been here for almost an hour – I’m the only bugger in the joint and you let the end of dinner slide without notice?  It was too late to scarpa so I sucked it up and hit the sack. I knew why the truckies had stopped stopping. In the morning I made myself a brew and hit the toe early.

Then in mid 2017 I hear on the mulga wire that the place’s changed hands – that it’s on the up and worth a visit and with Wazza being so generous with his time and his story, it’s obvious the stories were on the money.

While he’s talking I’m thinking the two women outside have gone quiet or just gone but then the grand entrance. Tilly’d seen the camera on the bar, listened to

my questions and realized it was time to hit the make-up room. Her mate is Trish who, when it gets busy comes up to help out from her home at Euabalong.

(Oh who hasn't heard of Euabalong Ball?

Where the lads of the Lachlan the great and the small,

Come bent on diversion from far and from near

To shake off their troubles for just once a year.)

So how does a pub in a place where the two people running it make up 25% of the population actually get busy?

Down the back of the pub there’s a three hole golf course which in the cooler months becomes a free camping place for anyone who wants to stay and most nights Tilly reckons there’s around twenty of ‘em parked down away from the road.

Wazza figures around 95% (‘maybe more’) come in for a meal and a drink and that 100% of riders do. There’s no power but the toilets and showers are open all night.  And they don't just overnight! He tells me about one bloke who became a local in under a week.

“He came in a coupla months back and ordered a beer and we had a bit of a yarn and then I asked if he wanted another, and he did.  Turns out he was travelling around and the way he did it was he’d go into a pub and if the people were up for a chat and the beer was cold he’d stay the night otherwise he’d move on. I asked him what he thought of this place and he said, “I’m just getting comfortable and I’m in for a session coz I won’t be driving anywhere tonight.”

Ended up, he stayed for five days and only left because the eftpos was on the blink and he ran out of cash. His name was Reg and he’d turn up in the morning for a session then go back to his van for lunch and in the arvo, he’d come back with a cockatoo on his shoulder. He became a real drawcard!”

There’s five rooms inside and a single costs me 50 bucks –room 1, right beside the road with Super Ten parked under cover at the window beside me. The heat’s driven the nomads south for a bit but during the evening couples come in off farm for tea with their kids and a few contractors come by to pick up slabs of supplies.

And the truckies are back. The evening is punctuated with the back beat of exhaust breaks then the double-shuffle kick downs as they slow and pull up across from the pub. The drivers all come in, many for a meal, a lot for a soft drink and most for a quick shower and refresh.  And a chat. There’s always the chat.

Karl’s one of the truckies who stops by for a monotony break and a freshen up.

He’s hauling cotton from down south to the only available gin up north and he’s still got a ways to go but he wouldn't think of driving past. He only drives at night and calls himself the ‘ghost driver’ and when he’s done, I get a ghostly image of him in front of his load.

When he’s gone Wazza explains the daily routine: “We’re open from ten each morning until the last one’s had enough, and the food’s on as long as there’s someone hungry in the place. Everyone’s welcome here. Stay as long as you like, or as little as you need to, we just hope that when you hit the road, you’re rested and refreshed.”

I share with him and Tilly an old news clipping from a very different time when the publican at this same pub in 1916 only escaped conviction for serving a beer to an aboriginal because the prosecution couldn't prove the fella was actually indigenous.

They both just shake their heads. We might have a long way to go, but there’s no denying we’ve already come a fair distance.

Apart from the hot days of summer, there’s a second meaning to ‘dog days’ and that’s a period of stagnation. Tilly and Wazza, with no small help from Namoi the blue heeler, have rescued the Mt Hope Royal Hotel from this second meaning  and added a new, fun one of their own.

And I’d like to write more about it but I have to get moving and there’s a bloody blue dog here demanding I play ball or it’s not going to get out from in front of my bike!