Nothing but the Pub

  Mulga Creek Hotel Byrock NSW To purchase my latest book on the Pubs of the Murray and Edward Rivers click on: nothingbutthepub.com                So anyway there’s no mine, no diggings, without their mullock piles and noodling for good pubs is no different – clichéd themed oh-so-cute and quaint joints with transient staff and oblivious management with zero-care factors about the organic entity of which they are briefly a part, are the inevitable slag piles of fossicking for the gems of the outback hotel landscape.             But for every slag pile, every mullock heap, unless it’s a blue duck, there’re gems – precious places like, well ….. like the Mulga Creek Hotel at Byrock. I’ve dropped in here three times and every time it’s been wet. Today’s no exception and there’re puddles out the front in the empty parking area.            Henry Lawson graced Byrock i...

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 ...