OUTBACK PUBS
Rebuilding Ora Banda
Goldrushes, ghosts, biker feuds and cold-blooded murder are all part of the rich past of Western Australia's Ora Banda Historical Inn - it serves a pretty good burger too.
Story Jackie Cooper photos Colin Kerr
'This Pub's Haunted', is painted in weather-faded thick white letters on the Ora Banda Historical Inn's sandstone bricks. "I don't know who wrote that there on the wall, but it's been here as long as I can remember," says the inn's current co-proprietor, Barry Foote, pointing to the inn's south-side wall. "When we worked out here in '98 and '99, my wife Anne was a cook at the inn. She had to get up at 3.30am one morning to cook breakfast for 80 or 90 miners who were living out in dongas out the back. And she swears she saw the ghost," he says.
Located 66 kilometres northeast of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, it seems
fitting that the last remaining pub in the 'virtual ghost town' of Ora Banda
should have its own ghost.
Full story Issue 32 Dec 2003/Jan 2004
