Gregory DownsHotel

On the banks of the Gregory River in Queensland's Gulf Country, this timber pub has poured drinks since 1877, when it operated as a Cobb & Co change station and a mounted-police post on the stock routes north. It's one of the few fixed points along the Wills Developmental Road, a low iron-roofed building offering a public bar, counter meals, fuel and a handful of rooms and campsites for people crossing the Gulf. Over Labour Day weekend the North West Canoe Club's river race brings paddlers through town, and the Gregory Downs Jockey Club's April meeting fills the surrounding paddocks with utes and swags. Outside those weekends it settles back into its everyday role: station hands, grey nomads and the odd angler crossing paths at the bar with the river running past the verandah. There's no booking system and no working website, just a phone line and a pub that has outlasted most of what once stood around it.