Oasis in the Outback

• Share

Top springs, postcode 0852, consists of one establishment: the Wanda Inn roadhouse. But the petrol station–pub–motel, 300 km southwest of Katherine, has the feel of a small town. Within its tidy sprawl of accommodation blocks, trailers, caravans and tents - powered by a shed-sized generator and watered by an artesian well - manager Terry Jones and her seven staff (plus Spike the dog, Pickles the wallaroo and a resident python) host a shifting population of local cattlemen and Aborigines, road workers, tourists and truckers. Isolated the place may be, says Jones, a former hairdresser, but it's never lonely: "We're all friends. You have to build good friendships out here, otherwise you'd just feel lost."

Native Son Lee Peterson, 21, drives a gravel truck for a Katherine-based road maintenance crew. He knows the Wanda Inn well - his grandmother used to own the place, and as a child he spent school holidays here playing or working for pocket money. Currently resealing the road just north of "Toppy," Peterson and his crew - who include his sister and his father-in-law - doss down in a trailer-mounted bunkhouse in the roadhouse's forecourt. "We always stop for a few days if we come through here," he says. "It is like an oasis in the desert."

Outdoor Life Across the road from the gas station forecourt, an Aboriginal family have made their home beneath a slender tree; friends and relatives come and go. "The grass keeps the wind off," explains father Leslie Robbor (standing, with back to the camera). On weekday mornings, his son Darren and daughters Brenda and Jasmine scrub up in the ablution block and go into the roadhouse, where manager Jones gives them breakfast and correspondence lessons sent from the Aboriginal community at Kalkarinji, 170 km to the south. If the kids are good, they get to cool off afterward in the roadhouse swimming pool.

Friendly Fauna As morning sun steals into the bar, Pickles, a gray wallaroo joey, wakes up on the pool table while her carer Nora Walsh, 18, does the accounts. Rescued after her mother was killed on the highway, Pickles now sleeps in a canvas tote bag instead of a furry pouch, drinks milk from a bottle as well as grazing on the well-watered lawn, and hops about the roadhouse as if it were native ground. What will happen when Pickles grows up the staff aren't sure, but at about 1 m and 20 kg, female gray wallaroos are, says Jones, "very petite."

In Two Worlds Terry's daughter Brooke refuels one of a convoy of cars on a fund-raising drive for Camp Quality, the children's cancer charity. The 18-year-old, who's worked in the roadhouse bar since graduating from boarding school in Brisbane last November, makes almost weekly visits to Katherine, often covering the 600-km round trip in a day. "I love seeing my friends and going to the races," she says. "I'm a big social butterfly."