Outback pub crawl in South Australia

When travelling in the outback, there’s no more welcome sight than a pub.

For Aussies, the pub is the ultimate symbol of civilisation and hospitality, often the only remaining commercial building in a small rural town, and a place where you can cool down with a cold cold beer or warm up with a hot meal. The pub is also a fantastic resource where you can find out what is happening in and around a town, from the bartender and the locals.

Here are five of the best pubs in outback South Australia!

JUMP AHEAD

• Cradock Hotel
• Mungerannie Hotel
• Transcontinental Oodnadatta
• Mount Dare Hotel
• Innamincka Hotel

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Cradock Hotel

We love the Cradock Hotel. It is a quaint pub in Southern Flinders Ranges where we always feel at home, so much so that we often plan our trip itineraries so we can stay at the Cradock.

It’s a great place to drop in on the way to/from the Bendleby Ranges, which we’ve visited several times to drive their fun and challenging 4WD tracks.

We first met Dave and Amy at the pub a while back, when they were relatively new there; this was long before we had created Off Track Wines. Their warm hospitality is amazing and genuine. We reconnected when they visited our stand at the Adelaide Caravan and Camping Show in February 2023 and so they became our first outback customer.

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The Cradock Hotel has three hotel rooms with aircon, three without, with free camping out the back for patrons for the cost of a very welcome beer or meal.

'The camping is pretty basic – it is just a flat area really, but the toilets are always clean and there are coin-operated hot showers for a couple of bucks.

If you’re a parent of younger kids, you’ll love the fact that there is a fenced outdoor nature playground coming off the dining room. It’s rustic timber with a group swing and balancing beams and climbing nets. The kids will be entertained while you relax with a drink while waiting for your meal. That’s worth a lot when you’re travelling as a family.

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It offers good pub food with a changing menu – burgers, parmies and pies, that kind of thing, cooked by Dave. The Big Hat right out the front is always good for a photo at sunrise too.

The hotel was built from stone in the early 1880s when the government opened settlements for crop farming north of the Goyder line. Sadly, after the initial ‘wheat rush’ were four years of crop failures which led to a sharp decline in the town’s population.

'The historic town is a testament to the difficulty faced by farmers in our drought inclined land.

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If you love a good ghost story, the locals swear that old Lorrie walks the hallways of the pub and you can hear his footsteps creaking the floorboards late at night.

'Apparently, publican Laurence Reardon passed away at the hotel in the early 1900s and loved the place so much he never left.

Ghosts aside, Craddock as a town is on the up. The pub was renovated about eight years ago and someone has just bought the old church and it has been renovated too. Like many towns, the pub provides a real focal point for the community to come together and socialise. It runs a Christmas pageant and Anzac Day ceremony, with the pub still at the heart of the town’s activities.

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Mungerannie Hotel

Mungerannie Hotel is the self-proclaimed ‘Centre of the Universe’, halfway along the Birdsville Track, about 200km north of Marree and 313km south of Birdsville.

It’s the all-important only fuel stop on the Birdsville Track, but there are lots of other reasons to stop and stay.

New owners took over in February 2023, giving the pub a freshen up while maintaining its outback character. So, if you’ve been to Mungarannie in the past, you need to go back and experience it now. We are really thrilled to see people investing in small towns in the middle of nowhere.

The hotel is separately owned from the adjacent Mungerannie Station, with whom there has been a bit of a water fight over access to the bore at the station which had been previously shared with the pub.

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The humans are not the only things vying for water rights, the birds are too! For nature lovers, there is a seasonal wetland out the back of the pub which also supports an impressive ecosystem of birdlife.

Mungerannie Hotel has a fantastic campground and facilities with hot showers and toilets. It’s a huge camping area with some protected sites amongst the trees if you need the shade as it can be pretty dry and dusty out there. There is also accommodation on site with 16 basic but clean and airconditioned motel rooms available.

If you are into motor history like my husband Brett (who restored his vintage HJ45 Troopie ‘Borr’ himself), there’s a cool collection of old rusty trucks there. They reflect the era of vehicle that would have been used by famed outback mailman Tom Kruse (the subject of the 1954 documentary film The Back of Beyond) to deliver mail and goods to stations along the Birdsville Track in the 1930s to 1950s.

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Publican Darren Murray loves talking about vehicles, especially Land Rovers, and his partner Vivienne is from Chile and she loves talking about wine, so we all had a good yarn about both.

We give the food a big thumbs up. During the season (April to November) there is breakfast (toasties and coffee), as well as a lunch and dinner menu. Apart from a wide selection of burgers, there are some interesting international dishes like jambalaya, butter chicken, beef cheeks, and slow cooked lamb ragout to tempt the taste buds. If you miss meal time, you can get a toasted sandwich any time.

Apparently, Mungerannie is an Aboriginal word for “big ugly face”, but we only found friendly faces here!

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Transcontinental Oodnadatta

Everyone knows the Pink Roadhouse at Oodnadatta, not just because of its paint job.

It’s open during the day for travellers to get fuel, takeaway, supplies and the necessary souvenirs for the Oodnadatta track. They also have a caravan park with unpowered and powered sites ($25/$40 respectively). A bit up the road there is free camping.

The awesome people behind the famous Roadhouse – Peter, Jenny and Simon – renovated and reopened the Transcontinental Hotel Oodnadatta at the start of the 2023 season, after it had been closed for a few years. The Tranny is a tiny pub that literally consists of a bar, a pool table, and a small seating area.

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They serve dinner during the season; the menu consists of your basic pub fare: fish and chips, schnitzels, etc plus whatever Simon decides to cook that day.

In terms of accommodation, the pub has five airconditioned rooms with shared ensuite bathroom as well. If you are trying to phone to book a room using the number showing in the Google listing, forget it. The place is so remote that Telstra says they can’t find it on a map so they cancelled the number. Ahh, the joys of being in the outback! Anyway, it’s best to just call the Roadhouse which is the telephone number provided below.

One totally unique thing is the ‘Oodna-Uber’ which is the local version of a ride share service, in a vintage Land Rover. Fly-in visitors can get a lift from the airstrip to town; or jump in for the short trip between the Roadhouse and the Tranny; or call for an Oodna-UberEats pizza delivery around town. Locals can even get a lift home if needed after pub closing time.

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There are very few hotels still trading in Australia that can boast a well-documented and colourful history over the last 133 years like the Transcontinental, which Peter shared with us recently:

“Built in 1890 to provide food, accommodation, entertainment and alcohol to Overland Telegraph and Railway personnel, it soon became a thriving if not boisterous hub for outlying cattle stations within a 400km radius.

Tall Tales and true as told by descendants of station barons droving their cattle to Oodnadatta for the next 40 years until the railway finally continued to Alice, their families would be waiting for up to three months in their Oodnadatta holiday homes. While the drovers took it in turns to frequent the pub, stories of brawls, gunfights and altercations with locals abound.

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“1932 saw the pub destroyed by fire in suspicious circumstances and a new modern premises was hastily erected. And then, during the Second World War, the hotel and town became a major staging point for aircraft, troops, equipment, and American scientists on their journey to Darwin.

“In 1980 The Hotel was purchased by the local Dunjiba people and had a succession of good, bad, and indifferent managers. After the cessation of the Railway, Adam and Lynnie Plate created the identity of the Oodnadatta Track which has sparked ongoing interest in exploring the indigenous and colonial history of the area.

“The story does not end here, my friend. In 2003 a local police officer was forced to fatally shoot a patron who was discharging firearms into the pub, and the bullet holes are still obvious. Then in 2017 another patron who was refused service belligerently drove his car right into the bar, narrowly missing drinkers and destroying the bar.

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“It was also central to the filming of the Last Cab to Darwin film which was released in 2015.

“In 2022, after rebuilding and renovating, two experienced publicans with over 50 years in pubs between them (Simon and Peter) have leased the Tranny and are continuing in true outback tradition with tall tales and true, making the Pub and Oodna a must-do on anyone’s bucket list.”

It’s definitely worth a stop in Oodnadatta, and if you can, try to coincide your visit with one of the various events the town has throughout the year such as the races, outdoor cinema, or a football match between stations versus local residents. Call the Roadhouse or follow them on Facebook [↗️] to find out what’s happening around town. The management are fun people and the Tranny provides a real hub for the local community.

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Mount Dare Hotel

Location. Location. Location! If you were to draw a dot in the middle of Australia, you’d pretty much put a pin in Mount Dare Hotel.

It is 10km south of the SA-NT border, on the edge of the Simpson Desert. It’s probably our favourite outback pub because it is such an amazing location, just 70 km from Australia’s best natural hot tub of Dalhousie Springs.

So many of our most memorable adventures have started and ended here. If you haven’t already, do the Binns track to the north of Mount Dare; you can drive all the way to Alice Springs and it is one of most beautiful tracks in Australia.

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Anyway, back to the pub. We’ve been to Mount Dare Hotel many times over the years, seven times we think, as we’ve done multiple trips through the Simpson with different groups of friends.

Previously, back in 2021, we’d left some prototype samples of our red wines in a can with one of the staff at Mount Dare Hotel for them to try. In November 2022 when Brett arrived with the new Off Track Wines cans, Graham remembered that he had the earlier samples and pulled out the prototypes from two years earlier.

They drank them together and they still tasted great, with Graham calling the wine “restaurant quality”, which is exactly what we intended when we created them. We wanted to drink the same quality wine when camping as we did when at home, in the convenience of a can.

In terms of history, Mount Dare was originally a remote cattle station, but the land was bought by National Parks & Wildlife in 1984 and became the Witjira National Park.

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Mount Dare Hotel offers a workshop for vehicle repairs and a 4x4 recovery service

Five years after that, the homestead was leased out for tourism and became the Mount Dare Hotel. It pretty much serves as a National Park’s office because you can purchase park passes to visit Dalhousie Springs and the Simpson Desert and get up to date information on the local road/track conditions there.

This is a really important place when it comes to safety in the central Australian outback. Mount Dare Hotel offers a workshop for vehicle repairs and a 4x4 recovery service if you get bogged. It even has two airstrips, with avgas available to purchase by the 200L drum.

The Hotel also operates a UHF Repeater for long-distance communication and monitors chat on Ch6 for safety.

Even for visitors not needing help, it’s just a great place to stop. In terms of accommodation, there are basic cabins – two with ensuites, four without, and some dorm-style too, and bookings are necessary.

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The campground is set in native bush in a protected area and has spacious unpowered sites with shady trees, and close to amenities including toilets and hot showers. You can see dingo footprints where they have patrolled the perimeter fence around the camp. Camping is always available even when the pub is closed and bookings are not required.

Generous meals are served at the bar, with the scotch fillet being the signature dish – it was a cattle station, after all – and the fully cooked brekky is a Godsend before you pack up and head out to the Simpson.

Alarmingly, Mount Dare was hit by a huge storm recently; apparently it was like a cyclone and brought 75mm of rain. The wind knocked all the accommodation off their blocks and smashed all the windows; one unit was completely destroyed, and the pub flooded.

It’s a reminder that weather conditions are never predictable out there and often severe. Fortunately, some of the guests that were stranded there helped them clean up, and some of their tradie friends flew in from Melbourne so everything is fixed up and ready to go for the coming season.

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Innamincka Hotel

Innamincka means “watering hole”, and there is no better name for this little gem on the banks of the Cooper Creek surrounded by the Strzelecki Desert to the south and Sturt Stony Desert to the north.

From the outside, the hotel looks like a big square iron hut. The Front Bar remains largely untouched since 1999 and is adorned with outback and historical memorabilia.

You can dine in the front bar or at the ‘Outamincka’ bar which is a large airconditioned restaurant area, with different lunch and dinner menus. It’s the normal pub-style meals, with some creative changes whenever supplies of some ingredients run short due to unpredictable road conditions. There is an awesome roast served on a Sunday.

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There’s even a mini golf course coming off the restaurant area, so the kids have something to do at the pub too.

Accommodation is motel-style rooms, with modern facilities which out here means air conditioning, hot shower, TV and a bar fridge. They also have bunkhouse style accommodation for large groups or for people who are happy to enjoy communal-style living, which makes it cheaper but also a lot more social. Finally, there are some separate huts which are nice and private for single travellers.

You can also pay at the pub to camp on the town common, which is the camping area next to the Cooper Creek. The pub is walking distance from the common if you want to return for a counter meal once you’ve set up camp.

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Along the creek there are some bigger permanent waterholes where you can just about always catch a fish or two.

The original pub was built in 1885 at which time it was popular with drovers and shearers working up and down the Strzelecki Track but this was washed away in a massive flood in 1956. The hotel wasn’t rebuilt until 1973 when 4x4 visitors to the region revitalised the town.

At that time, it was called Cooper Creek Hotel-Motel and renamed Innamincka Hotel in 1989. The current owners bought and began renovating the iconic pub in 1999, with later additions being newer motel rooms, water filtration system and solar power.

The Innamincka Hotel serves Off Track Wines on their Cooper Creek riverboat cruises. The team also arranges tours to visit the memorial sites for Burke and Wills whose tragic outback tale brings many a history loving visitor.

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