Outback icon Barrow Creek Hotel goes dry after liquor licence suspended
Images: David Ryan/Alamy, Barrow Creek Hotel/Facebook
The Barrow Creek Hotel has started 2026 without beer after the Northern Territory Liquor Commission suspended the venue’s liquor licence from 1 January, leaving a long outback stretch of the Stuart Highway without its best-known pit stop.
The heritage-listed pub sits about 283km north of Alice Springs, roughly halfway to Tennant Creek, and services remote communities along the highway.
Travellers and locals face limited options across about 200km of road.
The commission’s decision followed a hearing late last year that considered 10 grounds of complaint against long-time publican Les Pilton, 76, who has held the licence for 37 years.
The complaints were not centred on violence. Instead, they included allegations that Indigenous customers were served through a hatchway while standing outside and using government-issued income management cards. Inspectors also raised concerns about venue standards and basic operations, including female toilets with broken windows, exposed wiring, a broken hand dryer, and failures to provide meals and drinking water. Other issues included not maintaining a functioning computer and not responding to emails.
Commission chair Russell Goldflam noted Pilton’s “close and apparently effective relationship with local drinkers” — “who apparently support his unorthodox trading arrangements” — which he said appeared to “moderate the excessive and harmful use of alcohol”. Police reporting little alcohol-related trouble in recent months was also taken into account.
However, the key issue for the commission was whether Pilton was a “fit and proper person” to hold a liquor licence.
The commission accepted evidence from liquor and licensing inspectors Amber James, Holly Sowerby and Leticia Da Costa, describing them as “impressive” witnesses whose evidence was backed by contemporaneous written records and audio visual material “barely challenged in cross-examination”.
Goldflam was critical of Pilton’s evidence, describing it as “often evasive, inconsistent, argumentative or non-responsive”, and said his sworn evidence lacked “candour”.
The commission found it “implausible” that Pilton was unaware a man named Lachlan, who did not hold a responsible service of alcohol certificate, had served alcohol. It said claims that “Lachlan’s activities behind the bar” were limited to the occasion observed by inspectors “beggar[ed] belief”.
Even so, Goldflam acknowledged the unusual realities of operating an isolated roadhouse-style pub.
“There is no community at Barrow Creek, and no government-provided utilities, so he is also responsible for maintaining the supply of power and water, and for sewage disposal,” he said.
Goldflam also noted Pilton had been licensee for 37 years — “long enough to know how to keep this very remote wayside inn running, in a very challenging environment”.
“Being an authentic old-style Territory outback character who eschews bureaucracy and communications technology might make Mr Pilton unfit to be a modern metropolitan licensee, but arguably does not make him unfit to run an authentic old-style Territory outback pub,” he said.
The commission also heard evidence around the pub’s service arrangements for Indigenous patrons. Pilton said the hatchway had been used before he took over in 1988 “because Aboriginal people don’t want to comply with the dress standards for the bar, don’t like to wear footwear and don’t like to be confined”.
Da Costa told the hearing Pilton had said it was “not his fault the ‘Abo’s’ take [liquor] outside the licensed area to consume it”, and the evidence was not challenged in cross-examination.
After upholding eight of the 10 grounds of complaint, the commission found Pilton was “not a fit and proper person to hold the licence”, suspending it until he demonstrated a “proper appreciation of the responsibilities required to fulfil the role”.
Pilton was issued a list of steps to regain the licence. They begin with expanding the licensed area to include a shaded outdoor section that must be brought up to code and properly fenced. Other requirements include upgrading toilets and the kitchen, obtaining a certificate to serve food and hiring a cook.
He must also provide one email address for official contact, set it up on “both a functioning mobile telephone and a functioning computer”, and show he can respond to emails from Licensing NT or the commission within 48 hours.
Pilton told Guardian Australia he is working to meet the requirements.
“When that’s all completed, I’ll reopen,” he said, adding: “OK? Take care. Bye bye.”
Jonathan Jackson, 13th January 2026
