Lunch at the Duchess

The Duchess mining lode, partway between Cloncurry and Dajarra, was found in 1897 by a local pastoralist who named it after the black mistress of a purportedly high faluting English gentleman known as the Duke.

An important mining and railway hub developed with 2000 inhabitants, but the lode came to an end, and Duchess has now dwindled to 2 souls, the elderly couple who have been running the local pub or Duchess Hotel for the last 23 years.

We stopped for lunch, a most unsavoury sausage roll, and a chat with the publican's wife, Rhoda and her sausage dogs and blind horse. Rhoda had wonderful tales of growing up in Papua New Guinea, a country with 700 languages, before independence.

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Duchess, Pub, Old Pub, Queensland