Way-out watering holes: Our pick of Australia's best outback pubs

Dotted across the crumpled, pre-Google roadmap of rural Australia are one-off watering holes that don't promise designer lunches complemented by craft beer. More likely, they just rock with character and characters. On your next backroads ramble look for one of these originals or its mad-hatter cousin.

The Bloomfield Track from Cape Tribulation to Cooktown is, in the old money, 60 miles of rock 'n' roll; a gauntlet of creeks, mad gradients, bulldust and wet-season quagmires. When you hit Rossville south of Cooktown, its 150-year old Lions Den pub is a sight for sore eyes, not to mention backsides. A draught at this rambling corrugated-iron nest of rooms is a northern right of passage. The ripple-tin walls are so elaborately graffitied that if this was "down South" they'd be an installation in an art gallery. Some of "the Den's" local drinkers might be a bit camera-shy ("Just call me 'No Photos'") but blow-ins off the Bloomfield enduro love the place with its truly whopper steak sangers, live music, Sunday roasts, bunkhouse accommodation and camping. The Den proudly declares it has neither mobile reception nor Wi-Fi. lionsdenhotel.net.au

William Creek pub is another full metal jacket show. Established 1887 (eventually licensed in 1927) it services one of Australia's smallest towns (population 20, plus or minus) and is surrounded by the world's largest cattle station, Anna Creek (cattle population 17,000, plus or minus). The pub's appearance might suggest a corrugated-iron house of cards but its decor is roadhouse surrealism perfected. Step in from the desert's microwave heat and you behold an Outback Sistine. Every vertical surface seems festooned with abandoned IDs, business cards and driver licenses from around the world. Any gaps have been autographed by thousands of wayfaring strangers while the ceiling, a bricolage of bank notes from every nation, is draped with scores of flags, badges, caps, shirts and random unmentionables. To be fair, William Creek's civilising influences include two motels, monster solar panels, scenic flights (the main street is the airstrip), superior steak sandwich dining and a billion-star night skies. williamcreekhotel.com

Think, Indian Ocean outback. Rather than a bleached-bones desert airstrip, you land on a pinpoint of coral that's closer to Sumatra than Australia. Welcome to the Australian Indian Ocean Territory of Cocos-Keeling Islands - "Cocos" for short. The air terminal connects to the adjacent Cocos Club, social centre for the island's 140 citizens and the only pub between Broome and Sri Lanka. Dress code: bare feet, thongs acceptable. Happy Hour is from 5.30pm but it feels like happy hour any hour. The locals scatter themselves across open-air furniture and get garrulous, especially if Johnny Clunies-Ross, son of the last Tuan of Cocos Islands is in form. This non-profit community club has meals but, as is said of Cocos dining in general, "Food arrangements can be a bit Fawlty Towers." It's just a few paces from the bar to Cocos's unique runway, the only one in the world with a nine-hole golf course. facebook.com/CocosClubInc

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On the unsung stretch of Queensland coast between Bundaberg and Gladstone the even less sung settlement of Baffle Creek is home to a cluster of metal buildings. You roll into this tin-can valley looking for sustenance and a signal, and discover Baffle Creek Tavern and its eponymous Zincalumbar. "There's no Wi-Fi inside, sir. We're in a metal box," advises the barmaid. The clue is in the name - the building is made of zinc aluminium. No signal, no problem. The beer's cold, the locals cool and the hole-in-the-wall servery has a heritage menu of home-made custard slices, milkshakes, dim sims and Chiko Rolls. Honouring the nearby German pioneer village of Wartburg, the chef's special is the $10 Wartburger. With the lot, it is called, of course, the Warts n' All. There's a beer garden, wheelchair access, mudcrab races and a waggish sign advising rates charged by the bartender for making "Hiding From Wife" phone excuses.

Priscilla has turned 30 but she's still flashing it at the Palace in Broken Hill, aka "Broken Heel". This grand three-storey pile of memory, with its curious murals and sporadic drag shows has come a long way since it opened in 1889 as a temperance society coffee palace, only - no surprise - to soon go broke. It reincarnated as a licensed boozer in 1892. Riding the glittery train of the movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, every month or so several big, blokey performers in boas vamp it up at the Palace, doing lip-glossed, lip-sync Abba, complete with shrieks, stilettos and triple entendres. Good clean smutty fun, all overseen by home-grown murals of Botticelli's Venus, yearning seascapes and pneumatic mermaids. There's legal two-up on Friday nights and accommodation including the premium, lash-out Priscilla Suite. thepalacehotelbrokenhill.com.au

Karumba, on Queensland's wild west coast faces Gulf waters that are snap-happy with crocs but rich in prawns and barramundi. The Animal Bar here earned its name back in the 1980s when trawler crews and cattle ringers hit town on payday and Karumba Lodge had to bolt down every weaponable item, including the ashtrays. One cardinal rule applied: all brawls to be settled by sunrise. Today you can sit at the breezy, open-fronted pub, drinking something more civilised than "Barramundi Juice" (every white spirit on the shelf, plus creme de menthe and milk) and watch a motorcade of grey nomads storming "Barradise" with fishing rods and a tinny in tow. Or dine next door at the ironically named Suave Bar. Of all its unlikely visitors, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers came closest to nailing Karumba's climatic and other extremes with their 2006 song, Animal Bar: "The cry of isolation / the high of meditation / for sweet precipitation." karumbalodge.com.au

Pictures: DNSW; SATC; John Borthwick