Mate’s rates

Two 20-somethings running a pub in remote Stonehenge, 150km south of Longreach in western Queensland. What could possibly go wrong?

Story + Photos Fiona Sewell

Five years ago, the owner of The Stonehenge Hotel was flat out. He had only one member of staff. After a particularly busy night, six years into his supposed five-year plan for the pub, Tony Jackson was done. “I walked out of the kitchen and said,
‘If anybody wants to buy this bloody thing, it’s for sale’.”

In the bar that night playing pool were best mates Tom Auriac and Grant Champion. Both 24-year-olds, they had met as teenagers at St Brendan’s College in Yeppoon. Life had taken them in different directions – Tom to graphic design work in Brisbane, Grant back home to the Channel Country. Sick of the hustle and bustle of the city, Tom decided to give the outback a go and the pair had been working in the Champion family’s local quarry business. Half a bottle of rum later, they woke up owning the pub. “How many 20 somethings can say they’ve done that?” Tom laughs.

That was the easy part. What bank was going to lend money to two young fellas with bugger all to buy a pub in a tiny blink-and-you-miss-it town? Tony Jackson, now deputy mayor of the Barcoo Shire Council took a leap of faith and provided vendor finance. “The deal was done on the bonnet of a car – $1,000 every Monday, and they never missed a beat,” he says.

The original Stonehenge Hotel was built in 1884 and, like many country pubs, it later burned to the ground. It was rebuilt in the 1970s with a corrugated iron and timber frame along with fibro walls. Now the small dining room, with its out-of-tune old upright piano, has space for just eight.

But what it lacks in size, it makes up for in atmosphere. Once the doors are open, it’s like walking into a welcoming hug. The bar has been scorched with the brands of surrounding cattle stations. On a cool night, the only place to be is in the beer garden, snuggled up to the old steam engine that acts as a fireplace.