Saturday Ed.

Daly Waters Pub, Northern Territory.

There’s a shell of a helicopter nested on an outbuilding. All very ‘Nam-like. That’s only the start of the strange interlude in the day’s travelling that is the legendary – and award-winning – Daly Waters Pub.

Walk in the main door and you’re immediately confronted by the sight of hundreds of bras hung from the ceiling. Worry not, Vicar. It is all in the best possible Outback taste. And for equality-sakes, there are several boxer-shorts too. The walls are decorated with student cards and business cards and all kinds of personal mementos. 

Out back, there’s a thong tree where visitors dedicate their knackered and  exhausted flip-flops to some god of thongs. A wall is plastered with license plates. It seems clear people want to leave something of themselves at the Day Waters Pub.

It’s certainly very popular. It’s won a string of accolades – Best Wayside Inn 2013, no less. And you can see why. The food here is yummy. Yes there are the good Outback staples -- steak, schnitzels and barramundi dominate – but even the salads and veggie options are well thought out and not at all the quiche-cliches (quliches?) on offer in lesser establishments. We’re too early for the famous Beef ‘n’ Barra barbecue, but hey. It’s all good and very welcome nonetheless.

We’re eating our lunch in the shade when a proper Outback cowboy walks past. He must be something like seven feet tall. Lean as a post. Big old ten gallon hat. The lines on his face suggest a lifetime working the cattle stations. His eyes are as clear as a billabong. He can see me looking at him and is obviously getting a little anxious. I smile and thankfully he nods back, sips his beer and heads outside.

“He’d be great,” I say. For the film we’re making, I mean. 

“I’ll have a word,” says Tracey.

He’s called Saturday Ed from Sunday Creek, one of the big cattle stations nearby (think: size of Oxfordshire). When he says hello, I’m thrown. It turns out our Aussie cowboy is Scottish. He left sheep-farming in Scotland nearly 40 years ago, but couldn’t leave his accent. Ed still has that beautiful braw bricht moonlit nicht lilt to his voice. There’s only a faint lift at the end of the sentence, that famous Australian signifier.

That’s the great thing about places like this. You never know who you’re going to meet, or where they are going come from. As the bras, pants, thongs and license plates suggest: you think you’re in the middle of nowhere, but really it’s the crossroads of the world.

Yes, you are.