Giving it a crack

When Peter and Maz Saunders took on the Carinda Hotel a year ago, they made up for lack of experience with a full glass of enthusiasm.

Story + Photos Andrew Hull

It’s easy to picture the village of Carinda, in the black-soil plains of the Walgett Shire in northern NSW, as a classic crossroads of Western iconography, with long straight streets crossing and tapering towards distant vanishing points. There are, of course, more than just two streets that comprise the village, but with the main drag all but closed, the central point in Carinda is concentrated on the corner of Colin and Shakespeare streets, where the Carinda Hotel’s low verandah leans out over the shaded footpath.

“We’re the only business in town,” explains Marion ‘Maz’ Saunders, who manages the hotel. “We’re the coffee shop, we’re the post office, we’re the pub, which means we’re also the counselling service. We do everything!”

Maz points out the new features in the beer garden that she and her husband Peter have added since they took over the hotel in March 2025, including a food van and covered seating area with play equipment, lawns and stage. “We had about 600 people packed in here on race night,” Maz says. “That’s half the reason we bought this food van, so we could feed people. The food van has now become the post office and the coffee shop, because the girls across the road were no longer able to do it and if we didn’t take it on, the town would be without it. So now people just come to the pub and grab a coffee and a bacon and egg roll from the food van in the morning, check their mail, have a chat, and they’re off for the day.”