“There’s-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear” – the patron saint of Australian country music, Slim Dusty, long deplored – “than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer”.
Now a 200km stretch of highway through the heart of the outback and several remote Aboriginal towns are, in Dusty’s words, so lonesome, after a historic pub was stripped of its liquor licence from the first day of 2026.
