Royal Hotel Hughenden
After departing Herberton, we headed south out of the Atherton Tablelands and into the outback. As alluded to last week, we had a 6-hour drive before we would arrive at the Royal Hotel Hughenden. So there was time for a few stops on the way to break up the journey.
The first stop of the trip (just a quick 3 hours into our drive) was at the Oasis Roadhouse for lunch. And since we were on holidays, a lunchtime beer was on the cards as well. For that we popped into what is apparently the Smallest Bar in Australia (which is attached to the roadhouse). And at 1.2m x 1.2 meters, you probably would be pretty hard pressed to find a smaller one
After lunch, it was back into the car for the next leg of the trek to Hughenden. Our next stop was another 2 hours down the road at Porcupine Gorge.
For a part of the country that is generally pretty flat as far as you can see in every direction, it was pretty cool to see this massive canyon opening up in the middle of the barren landscape. There wasn’t a ton of water running through it when we were there, but still pretty cool.
Finally after another hour of driving, we arrived at Hughenden itself. Hughenden is an outback hub and has served as the centre of operations for a number of large energy projects in the area. But if there’s one thing Hughenden is known for, it’s dinosaurs.
Specifically, it’s known for the Muttaburrasaurus. The Muttaburrasaurus is kind of Australia’s unofficial dinosaur (in terms of official titles, it will have to settle for being Queensland’s official State Fossil Emblem). It’s the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton to be found in Australia. And that first one was found a couple hours down the road in Muttaburra (hence the name). But extensive subsequent Muttaburrasaurus fossil finds have been made in the immediate vicinity of Hughenden itself. So when we arrived in to Hughenden, I immediately dragged John and Rod to the Flinders Discovery Centre to see the replica of that first fossil find, Hughie.
The Flinders Discovery Centre is actually really well done and well worth a visit even without Hughie. They’ve done a really good job on it.
After all of that (and I acknowledge it’s taken me a fair bit longer that usual to get to the actual Royal in this Royal Tour post), we headed a few blocks further into town to the Royal Hotel Hughenden.
We were staying in the motel rooms out the back so we grabbed our keys from the friendly receptionist, dropped our stuff in the rooms, and headed into the pub for a beer. Overall, the Royal Hotel Hughenden is a fairly good but fairly standard Queensland country pub. It’s of the single story rather than the big 2-story variety. But it’s a welcoming, friendly place to sit and have a beer. There was, however, one very specific thing that made it extremely unique: the pool table.
The pool table is actually round! I’ve seen maybe one of these before, but they’re not at all common. Almost as unusual as the shape of the table was the fact it was free to play. As this was late arvo on a Monday, it was pretty quiet and we had full reign on the table.
And we most definitely took advantage of that. We played for a solid hour or so while we enjoyed our schooners of XXXX. The odd angles of missed shots coming off of rounded walls gave John a whole new arsenal of ways to jag a game of pool. And he did indeed jag his way to a couple of wins in the first two games. Thankfully, order was restored with the next 3 games and my pool superiority was reasserted. We tried to get Rod involved as well, but he was content to watch on in disappointment as I beat his son yet again.
As I mentioned, it was fairly quiet in the pub for the afternoon. The attached bottle shop kept up an extremely brisk trade. But as the evening set in, people started coming in very steadily. By the time it hit about 6 o’clock, the place was packed. For a pub in a town of about 1,100 (and there was a second pub in town) on a random Monday, it was pretty impressive how many people they had coming through the door.
The food was really good too. I had a rack of ribs that was excellent and not obscenely expensive either, especially given the remoteness of the town. It wasn’t hard to figure out why everyone was rolling into the Royal. After a couple more schooners for a nightcap, we retired for the evening.
Before leaving Hughenden the next morning I took a walk around town. There’s even more dinosaur memorabilia about including a Muttaburrasaurus statue and a pterodactyl nest made up of discarded industrial metal bits and pieces.
The Royal Hotel Hughenden was the last of only 3 Royals on this leg of the Tour. As we start to get to the pointy end of it all, each trip is going to net us fewer and fewer Royals. In fact, after this one, we only have 4 more trips before we officially complete the Tour. But for this leg, Hughenden was an excellent final stop before we got back into the car for the 4 hours back to Townsville and our flight back to reality.
This brings us fully up-to-date with the Royals visited to date and it’s still another 6 weeks before we hit the road again. So next week there will be a write up about another pub we visited on this trip. It’s not a Royal but we loved it and have dubbed it an ‘Honorary Royal’.
Royal Stats
- Town/Suburb: Hughenden, QLD
- Population: 1,113
- Date Visited: Monday, August 31, 2026
- Visited By: Cory, John, and Rod
- Beer Sponsorship on Sign: N/A
- Beer Consumed at Pub: XXXX
- Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $7.00
- Unique Award: Coolest Pool Table/Pool Table with the Fewest Number of Sides
- Tour Progress: 87.7% (114/130)