STORIES

Lunch is in full swing when we arrive at the Lion's Den Hotel in Rossville. Backpackers man the bar and the meals are your standard pub fare. Up here that includes parmas, steaks and grilled barramundi, with a limited selection of beers on tap. Very few of the clientele would be local; most have come here from somewhere else. In our case, we've driven up from the Daintree rainforest, on our way to Cooktown on an Outback Spirit tour that will eventually reach Cape York. Little has changed at the pub since it first started serving tin miners in 1875. Graffiti stains the interior walls, murals decorate the outside and there's a traffic light mounted above the bar.