The line stopped here once an hour. So does the room.
Messages crossing the continent were read, rewritten and sent on from this building. We kept the insulators, the wire and the habit of working to the hour: a bush kitchen, six tables, and a signal that tells the floor to change over.
A repeater station that still runs to a schedule
Every few hundred kilometres the telegraph needed a station where a faint signal could be read and sent on fresh. This was one of them, and the operating room — long, narrow, high at the back — is now the card floor.
Glass insulators came out of a crate under the floor when the boards were lifted. They run along the wall above the tables, still on their pins, with a length of the original wire strung between them.
We take about fifty people. Beyond that the room stops being a room and turns into a queue, and there is nothing enjoyable about a queue in the Centre.
Six tables
Down the length of the old operating room, one lamp each.
One grill
Coolibah and mulga coals, lit at three, working until midnight.
Five staff
Two on the grill, two behind the bar, one walking the floor.
Six tables, one signal, no money anywhere near them
The card games here are social and that word is meant literally. Nobody buys in, there is no pot, nothing is won and nothing is lost except the standing of whoever misread the table.
Chips are the house's. They keep score for the evening, they cannot be bought, cannot be handed back over the bar and are worth nothing at all once the lights go up.
On the hour a bell sounds — the same one that used to mark a scheduled transmission. Hands finish, seats loosen up, and anyone standing about gets a chance at a chair.
Open tables
Four seat whoever is next in line at the signal.
Held tables
Two can be reserved by phone for parties of up to six.
First-timers
Tuesday at five, an hour with a dealer, costs nothing.
Cooking off what grows out here, not what gets flown in
Kangaroo is the backbone of the board — quick over hot coals, rested longer than people expect, sliced against the grain. Around it goes whatever the bush food suppliers have: mountain pepper, lemon myrtle, wattleseed, saltbush.
Beer is Territory-brewed and poured cold enough to hurt, which is the only way worth pouring it between October and March.
The grill shuts at midnight. The bar keeps going for an hour after that with damper, dips and whatever cold cuts survived the evening.
Off the coals
Kangaroo fillet, quail, and one vegetable dish that changes weekly.
Out of the bush pantry
Mountain pepper, lemon myrtle, wattleseed, bush tomato.
Across the bar
Four Territory taps, six wines, and a long shelf of rum.
The station, the coals and the wire above the tables
On the mall, halfway along
Where
47 Todd Mall, Alice Springs NT 0870
Phone and email
+61 8 8952 6073 · desk@outbackplays.com
Open
Tuesday to Saturday, 4pm – 1am
Six things that are not up for discussion
Over-18s only, everywhere in the building, and ID gets asked for whether you look eighteen or eighty.
House chips count points and nothing else — they are never sold, never redeemed and hold no monetary value at any point.
No money crosses a table. Not a side bet, not a wager between friends, not a cash prize at the end of a night.
There are no gaming machines in this building. No pokies, no terminals, no screens, and none coming.
When the signal sounds, hands are played out and then the table settles — nobody keeps a seat by refusing to stand up.
We serve alcohol responsibly and we stop when someone has had enough. The bar makes that call and the floor backs it.
Five nights, each keeping different time
What the phone rings about
- Can I get a game through this website?
- You cannot. There is no app, no account, no online room and nothing on these pages to click into. The tables are on Todd Mall and that is the only place they exist.
- Is there cash anywhere near the tables?
- Never. No buy-in, no pot, no rake, no prize money and no wagering of any kind — chips track points for the evening and then get put away.
- Do you have pokies?
- Not a single machine in the building. It is the first thing people notice and the reason a fair few of them keep coming back.
- Do I need to reserve?
- For the grill on Friday and Saturday, yes. For a table, no — four of the six seat whoever is waiting at the signal.
- What is the bell for?
- It marks the hour, the way the station's transmission schedule used to. Hands finish, seats change over, waiting players get a go.
- Can someone under eighteen eat here?
- No. The licence covers the whole building, so the age limit does too.
Everything about this place fits in four numbers
Operators here kept a running tally of what went down the wire in a shift. Ours is shorter, and it answers most of what people ring up to ask before they have finished the question.
Ring the desk and tell us which half you want
Somebody answers from two in the afternoon. Say how many, what time, and whether you are coming to eat, to play or to do both, and it goes in the book.