woof woof ! wrote:'World's most remote' pub up for sale
One of the world's most remote pubs has gone up for sale - and is expected to fetch up to £4 million.
For more than 100 years the Birdsville Hotel -- the so-called dead heart of Australia's outback -- has been a refuge and drinking spot on the fringe of the forbidding Simpson Desert.
At the northern end of the notorious Birdsville Track, which stretches 517 km (321 miles) across the Strzelecki and Sturt's Stony Deserts, the pub's whitewashed stone verandahs are a magnet for adventure tourists from Australia and the world.
"It's a great business. Sometimes I almost tear my hair out thinking all roads lead to Birdsville, and on any given night there can be 300-400 people in the hotel," owner Jo Fort told Reuters.
A former nurse, Fort met her builder husband at the hotel, where she arrived 27-years ago on her own outback tour of Australia. The 1880's-vintage pub is a bolthole from temperatures topping 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit).
To reach the hotel most people travel by four-wheel-drive, carrying their own fresh water, supplies, fuel, and spare parts to guard against emergency in a desert area larger than France at 584,000 sq km (225,500 sq miles).
But some patrons fly in for a night's drinking, particularly during September when the town's spring races are held and the pub's staff rises like the temperature from six to 60.
No price has been set but Fort said, "There's a few million dollars in bricks and mortar here, and that's not counting the blood, sweat and tears."
looks a bargain, i may invest
Can see it now Judge . At least Ciggy will have somewhere to drink .
