Imagine driving along a lonely piece of road for a while, without much to look out the window for. Hardly a car goes past because, lets face it, it’s Australia, you’re out of the city and so there aren’t that many people around anyway. All of a sudden, you spot this colourful shape in the horizon and, as you get closer, you might even be tempted to think you’ve somehow just jumped into a cartoon.

You’re probably on the Hume Highway in Australia and you’ve just come across the Ettamogah Pub, which many consider the most photographed pub in the world (and here are some more photos of it, just to help ensure the statement is accurate). It is a quirky place that adds a little more fun to your Australian roadtrip. It’s definitely worth parking the campervan and going for a wander around and having a drink, or even a meal. We didn’t try the meals so I can’t comment on the food. It was the middle of the afternoon of a really hot day so we settled for an ice cream, knowing we still had a lot of kilometers to cover on the road that day.

  

This particular Ettamogah Pub, in Albury (New South Wales), is the first one to have been built. Since then, a few others have opened in Australia, including in Sydney and the Sunshine Coast, but this one remains the original one. Come to think of it, the “most photographed pub in the world” accolade, if true, is probably valid for the Sunshine Coast or Sydney replicas. This particular location might just be a bit too out of the way to ever have the “most photographed” anything. But I could be wrong (no, really).

Last May, the owner announced a $3 million revamp for the pub. I’m not sure if any work has been done on it since then or not. These photos are from our trip over Easter 2009. We got a spaceship campervan for seven days and I had my first campervan-holidaying experience ever, which I really should blog about in a separate blog post. Spoiler alert: it ends with the campervan parked in a motel carpark on the last night and us requesting “any room that has a functioning hot shower, please!” to the motel receptionist.