Whim Creek pub taps history
A green light for the amber fluid to flow again in the middle of the Pilbara red dirt has ignited a new buzz around a WA icon.
As three women parked their Harley-Davidsons in front of the Whim Creek Hotel yesterday, it symbolised a tradition that has thrived for the best part of 130 years.
Representing the Pilbara Motorcycle Sisters — or, as she was keen to stress, the PMS — Deborah Napier rejoiced in the hotel reopening.
The mother of three said her parents were “gypsies” who found Roebourne and never left and she was delighted to revisit the site of many happy times over the past four decades.
“It was sad when it closed,” she said. “We’d have picnics, run around in the bush and there were pigs on spits and a party atmosphere. It’s always had a thrashing in cyclones but it’s a really great meeting place out in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s the heart of the Pilbara, the lifeblood out in the middle of nowhere.”
The “Pink Pub” , as locals know it, last poured beer in late 2011.
However, a joint-venture between Roebourne’s Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation and Ngarluma Aboriginal Corporation has given it new life after they bought it from miner Ventura Venturex Resources for $1.7 million.
The grand reopening is on May 2 but locals and travellers are sweeping back in.
Local Patrick Churnside gave a theatrical welcome to Ngarluma country yesterday in thongs, an Akubra hat and a Naidoc shirt.
Using boomerangs as percussion, he sang several songs of local significance.
The cockatoos locals said had lived there 40 years chattered wildly outside the beer garden as AC/DC blared behind them.
Demountable toilets at the rear among rustic and rusted artefacts welcome “blokes”, “sheilas” and “wheelies”.
Five grave headstones recognise the war efforts of the local Lockyer family and photos around the renovated bar tell of the pub’s past.
A “hook and ring” game is pinned to a wall and the Barra Burger is back.
Harry Mowarin strokes his beard as he recalls days at the pub over two decades.
Neither he nor fellow long-time patron Shane Donovan can confirm that a python used to hang from the rafters but both swear by the beer-swilling camel. Then there is Thomas Darlington, the ghost who haunts the halls — the victim of either a brutal union dispute or the jealous rage of a prostitute’s client.
But the pub is definitely a place where football trips between Roebourne and Port Hedland became particularly legendary.
“It was always a stopover for a couple of hours coming back from Hedland,” Mr Morawin said. “It was full-on and win, lose or draw, you’d always pull up. It was the highlight, more than the game.”
Joint venture board member Belinda Churnside said the pub’s profits would be used to improve local Aboriginal health and for hospitality and tourism training.
But like the roadside sign trying to goad passers-by in, hotel general manager John Smithies said a visit was a must.
“How can you pass Whim Creek?” Hotel general manager John Smithies said. “You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
