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“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.
Yet – and with all due respect to the bush balladeer from Nulla Nulla Creek – while the days since 1 January at the Barrow Creek Hotel have undoubtedly been dreary, there have been those more morbid by far.
For this wayside inn 283km up the Stuart Highway from Alice Springs, halfway between Alice and Tennant Creek, was the last place British backpacker Peter Falconio was seen alive before he was brutally murdered by Bradley John Murdoch in a 2001 ambush that partially inspired the horror film Wolf Creek.
Violence, though, was not among the factors contributing to the Northern Territory Liquor Commission’s decision late last year to suspend the Barrow Creek Hotel’s liquor licence after a hearing that considered 10 grounds of complaints against its publican of 37 years, Les Pilton, aged 76.
Instead, they included serving Indigenous customers through a hatchway at the end of the bar while they stood outside and used government-issued income management cards designed to prevent welfare spending on grog. They ranged from female toilets with broken windows, exposed wiring and a hand dryer that did not work to a failure to provide meals and drinking water, maintain a functioning computer or respond to emails.
In the decision, the commission’s chair, Russell Goldflam, noted that Pilton’s “close and apparently effective relationship with local drinkers” – “who apparently support his unorthodox trading arrangements” – appeared to “moderate the excessive and harmful use of alcohol”.
Indeed, that local police reported little alcohol-related trouble in recent months counted in Pilton’s favour.
The key question to the commission’s deliberations was whether Pilton was a “fit and proper person” to hold a liquor licence at the heritage-listed pub, with its original cellar, pressed tin ceilings and patterned cement blockwork, that he has run almost half his life.
The commission accepted the evidence of the liquor and licensing inspectors Amber James, Holly Sowerby and Leticia Da Costa, who it considered were “impressive” witnesses armed with evidence “largely supported by contemporaneous written records” and audio visual recordings “barely challenged in cross-examination”.
In contrast, Goldflam described Pilton’s evidence as “often evasive, inconsistent, argumentative or non-responsive” – and his sworn evidence as lacking “candour”.
The commission found it “implausible” that Pilton was unaware that a man called Lachlan, who did not have a responsible service of alcohol certificate, did in fact serve alcohol. That “Lachlan’s activities behind the bar” were confined to the occasion on which he was observed by inspectors “beggar[ed] belief”.
But, on the other hand, the NT Liquor Commission chair considered Pilton was more than just a publican.
“There is no community at Barrow Creek, and no government-provided utilities, so he is also responsible for maintaining the supply of power and water, and for sewage disposal,” Goldflam said.
Further in his favour, the commission recognised that Pilton has been the licensee for 37 years. “Long enough to know how to keep this very remote wayside inn running, in a very challenging environment.”
Barrow Creek taps into non-potable bore water. The complimentary tap water he is legally obliged to provide patrons, Pilton procures by the cask, 283km away in Alice Springs.
“Being an authentic old-style Territory outback character who eschews bureaucracy and communications technology might make Mr Pilton unfit to be a modern metropolitan licensee, but arguably does not make him unfit to run an authentic old-style Territory outback pub,” Goldflam said.
Some of that old-style Territorian flavour, though, Goldflam appeared to find less than endearing.
Pilton provided evidence that the pub’s hatchway had been used to serve Indigenous patrons prior to his taking it over in 1988, “because Aboriginal people don’t want to comply with the dress standards for the bar, don’t like to wear footwear and don’t like to be confined”.
Da Costa provided evidence that Pilton had said it was “not his fault the ‘Abo’s’ take [liquor] outside the licensed area to consume it”, which was not challenged in cross-examination.
On balance, after upholding eight of 10 grounds of complaint against him, the commission found Pilton was “not a fit and proper person to hold the licence,” suspending it until he demonstrated a “proper appreciation of the responsibilities required to fulfil the role of being the holder”.
Pilton was set a list of tasks he would need to undertake to return beer to that lonesome stretch of highway, which began with increasing the area of the premises in which he was licensed to sell liquor to include an outdoor shaded area, which he would be required to bring up to code and properly fence.
Among the other requirements: that he upgrade the toilets and kitchen, obtain a certificate to serve food and hire a cook. Also, that he provide liquor licensing with a single email address, set it up on “both a functioning mobile telephone and a functioning computer” and demonstrate “the capacity to respond by email to emails sent by Licensing NT or the commission to the nominated address within 48 hours”.
Pilton responded to a call from Guardian Australia by saying he was working to formally comply with the liquor commission’s requirements.
“When that’s all completed, I’ll reopen,” he said, before adding: “OK? Take care. Bye bye.”
