Without the Mount Mary pub in South Australia, there’d be no Mount Mary.
Story By Ian Glover
Most outback towns have a pub. Some are a pub and that’s the case with the Mount Mary Hotel, south-west of Morgan in south-east South Australia. Out in the saltbush country, it’s now run by Adrian ‘Swannie’ Stanley and Annette ‘Annie’ Dennis. A little while ago, the pub had a pretty rough reputation as a bikie joint with wet T-shirt competitions and everything else that went with it, but the couple wants to take the business back to what it should be – an old-fashioned country hostelry with a few modern touches. Foremost is the food – not your standard pub fare. Sure, toasted sandwiches are on the menu, but how often do you see fish, pasta, Thai chicken, hand-cut potato wedges and goat-meat sausages on the board at your local pub, let alone one out in the backblocks? Swannie, who previously worked in vineyards in the Barossa Valley, also plans to have camp-oven cookouts once the tourist trade has built up.
This story excerpt is from Issue #63
Outback Magazine: Feb/Mar 2009
