A landmark Stuart Highway pub is on the market – complete with giant stubby of NT Draught, pensive Pink Panther and its own zoo.
Barry Sharpe is the 74-year-old publican of the Larrimah Wayside Inn, around 500 kilometres south-east of Darwin. He moved to the “whistle-stop” town around 25 years ago and ended up running the pub so it wouldn’t close down.
“I came here and just stayed,” Sharpe told PubTIC. “Twelve years ago the pub became part of a deceased estate. The operators basically ran amok and didn’t pay rent and when the estate settled the man’s sons wanted out.
“I wasn’t doing a lot at the time, so I talked to them and said I didn’t want to see it close, and decided to run it myself.”
While he had not managed a pub before, Sharpe ran the local historical society and operated the Larrimah pub as part of that, with some help from a few volunteers along the way.
Himself an animal enthusiast, he has accumulated quite a collection of fauna out the back of the watering hole. This includes hundreds of species of rare and exotic birds, and reptiles including lizards, snakes and a 3.5-metre saltwater crocodile, named Sam.
Out front, a unique array of oddities include a tribute to the 2-litre NT Draught can – a larger-than-life-size 10,200-litre (2250 gallon) replica – adjacent to a model of the Pink Panther, holding a beer, and an ultralight plane on a pole, piloted by another Pink Panther.
The tiny town boasts around 10 local inhabitants – virtually all of whom are loyal patrons of Larrimah’s only pub. But the quirky Inn gets lots of attention from visitors traversing the epic Stuart Highway. Turning over around $400k annually, Sharpe is hoping for $500,000 for the freehold.
After more than a decade behind the bar, and reinvesting everything into the business and infrastructure and his beloved “menagerie”, the Larrimah local is ready to spend his time enjoying the pub rather than running it.
“It was never my intention to become a publican,” admits Sharpe. “It’s just the way things worked out. I hope I can find someone with an interest in animals to take over.”
