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Overlander and Billabong: Outback roadhouse/motel people are (mostly) weird
Posted by daveb on January 26th, 2009
Fact: People who work in customer serving businesses in the outback are weird.
So what is a roadhouse? Essentially, it’s a petrol station with a shop, cafe and possibly some overnight rooms situated slap-bang in the middle of nowhere. These much-needed pitstops know their worth and charge through-the-nose for everything they sell and who can blame them? The same ninety-eight cent bottle of water from our Freo supermarket just cost me five dollars, fair dinkum. City unleaded petrol fluctuates between 91-107 cents for a litre, in the Western Australian outback we’ve paid 145 cents.
With the marked exception of the keen-to-please staff at the Billabong Roadhouse (the petrol station, not the motel next door), everyone we’ve met in outback roadhouses are grumpy-as-you-like. Must be the heat and the flies — they’ve got to us too.
Example 1: The Overlander Roadhouse
As I stand at the counter about to pay for $50 of fuel, Squiffy drops a $3.50 bag of plums on the surface and a small handful of paper serviettes.
“Uh, uh, uuuuuhhheeeerrr! Too many napkins! It’s supposed to be one per person.”
After my momentary confusion, I return three of the five serviettes to the holder and the deal proceeds as before.
Example 2: The Billabong Motel
Let me clarify here that the Billabong Motel is a very different business from the Billabong Roadhouse. In fact, when I asked in the Roadhouse about our options for camping, the helpful staff told me to camp over the road in the rest area, ignoring the “no camping” sign completely. When I enquired about the camping sign that appeared to be next to her property, she went to great lengths to emphasize that the motel-with-campsite next door was a completely separate operation from hers. We soon found out why.
This was actually the second time that we had walked into the Billabong Motel. The first time is was to sample the “delicious, homestyle food served all day”. We were told that the chef had gone home. This time we needed food, drink and a pitch for our tent (we weren’t keen on sleeping in a deserted rest area in the outback).
Aside from his circular-motioned hand polishing the bar, the grey-haired man stood completely motionless, eyes transfixed on these two idiots–us–walking up to his bar.
“We’ve been told that you offer camping here?”, I offered.
“It’s too hot for camping”, he countered.
“Oh, we’ll be alright thanks, we’ve come from further up north and we know all about the heat!”, I smiled politely.
“I don’t think you do”, he said closing the matter, “it’s nine dollars a night.”
“Great, And we’d like to eat, do you have a menu?”, we moved to the next point on the agenda.
“Food’s off”, and he stared.
We muttered something about going next door to get something from the roadhouse before they close for the night. A couple of sandwiches and a cup of chips, to take away. We carried the booty back into the motel bar to order a drink to go with our food and again our host stood completely still, although this time with a open-mouthed disbelieving stare.
Momentarily, we all stood in silence (a game I love) but Squiffy curled and broke the stalemate.
“Can we order a drink?”, she asked.
“YOU CAN’T BRING THAT IN HERE!”, he bellowed, motioning to the food.
Perplexed, “why not?”, I asked.
“YOU CAN’T TAKE COAL TO NEWCASTLE!!”
It was one of those moments where, afterwards, the mind conjures up all kinds of witty retorts like “but Newcastle hasn’t got any coal!”, but at the time we could muster no better response than, “well… where should we eat it then?”
“OUTSIDE!!!”
Outside, in the heat, with one hand we munched our way through a sandwich and batted-away flies with the other. After gobbing our illegal food, we returned indoors to request some liquid refreshment. The doors were open and a large fan blew misted-water into the room. The air conditioning unit was switched off.
“Is it cool enough in here for you?”, our caring host asked.
“It’s ok”, hummed Squiffy.
“WELL DON’T EXPECT IT TO BE COOL WHEN ALL THE BLOODY DOORS ARE OPEN!”
We chose not to enquire any further about the doors and their residual positioning.
My coke, still in the can, was thouroughly pleasurable. Squiffy pushed her luck further by politely requesting a glass with some ice.
“OICE? OICE! WHAT ELSE DO YOU BLOODY WANT?!”
Spotting the Fremantle football paraphernalia, Squiffy made one last-ditch attempt to make friends.
“So you support the Dockers?”, she beamed, content at her local football-team knowledge.
“I USED TO PLAY FOR SOUTH FREMANTLE. I HATE THE DOCKERS.”
We gave up and amused ourselves at how we’d just met a distant ancestor of my friend Martin. (Hi Martin!)
Here’s a couple of photos of us waking up in his campsite the next day, for your amusement:
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12 comments »
Comments
Comment from Jan
Time: February 16, 2009, 8:46 am
I know exactly where you are coming from. My husband and I used to ne relief managers at the Billabong Roadhouse. Sweet isn’t he (the man from the Hotel) I mean??
Comment from daveb
Time: February 18, 2009, 11:26 am
@Jan: Nice to hear from you! As stated above, the Billabong Roadhouse is indeed a desert oasis. The owner of the motel next door is a rare breed indeed though! We can’t understand why the bloke would work in a customer-facing environment when he clearly hates dealing with people! (We got chatting to his previous customers who had a similar experience to us…)
Squiffy (my partner in grime) says “Don’t get me started on the filthy state of his campsite toilets either!”
Where are you working now?
Comment from RG
Time: June 28, 2009, 11:07 am
I found your story of Billabong hiliarous. My grandfather and grandmother built the original Billabong motel, hotel and roadhouse.( before the hotel was burnt down). His words were that he was trying to create an oasis in the desert. It is a real shame you didn’t camp there in the 70’s when we lived there. It was a very lively and friendly place (with incredible customer service I might add). I have so many incredible memories from there.
I took my english boyfriend a couple of years ago to show him where I grew up. It was a bit of a cultural shock and he thought he was on Mars but he loved it.
I was very disappointed with the Billabong Hotel owner. He didn’t carry on the spirit originally established. But I suppose anyone who releases a “mans” book called “Never Mind the Billshit” should rethink his costumer relation skills.
Comment from norma
Time: October 22, 2011, 8:58 am
Ian and I have, in the last 5 months, purchased the Billabong Hotel Motel and Caravan Park. It is now clean and tidy has good food with the cafe open 6am to 8pm plenty of icy beer/wines AND you can be served by friendly helpful staff! Please give us a try – you will be surprised!! PS the grumpy man retired!
Comment from Glenn Chaplin
Time: December 13, 2011, 4:15 am
I look forward to our stay in April 2012, Just spoke to Ian and he sounds like a very friendly man indeed, we travel this path often and are always looking for clean friendly accomodation and a good meal, I am sure our opinion will be different to the above from the reception I recieved on the phone, new owners can make huge differences!
Comment from Craig and Casey
Time: January 4, 2012, 12:47 pm
When I read example 1, I burst out laughing and had to shout my other half through to read it too. When we were driving up through these parts in the Scottish summer of 2010, we purchased some chips and a couple of drinks and were greeted with the EXACT same response about our overindulgence of napkins, its making me laugh just writing it too.
Also, we went next door to have a look and see what the bar was like, as we were thinking of staying there on the way back down. Again we were greeted with the same sarcastic response about leaving the door open after a strange look and awkward silence when we walked up to the bar.
Not to worry though, the other roadhouses we stopped at appeared to be inhabited by more normal polite folks. Needless to say, we didn’t stay here on our way back to civilisation (Perth).
Hope to return soon…
A very cold and windswept Scottish Duo
x
Comment from Mark
Time: June 14, 2012, 11:49 am
I read the posts and almost split my sides laughing, except for the one from Norma which reminded me of the responses that I used to make when I took a business, in response to negative posts about what happend BEFORE my ownership.
I’d like to add my comments that, we know how hard Ian and Norma have worked to build up the business and the efforts that they are putting in, we have friends that work there and have said how wonderful the owners are and how hard they try to make everybody happy, so, with respect, what happened prior to a change of ownership happened, what’s going on now is a new storey.
Please try and support these people with positive posts about what they have to offer, not what happened “X” years ago.
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