Our story

The Story of Larrimah Hotel

The Larrimah Hotel building was originally established at Birdum in 1930. Birdum town is 8 km south of Larrimah and boasted The Birdum Hotel, store, boarding house and six houses with a population of 25 and had developed at the end of the railway line from Darwin. This was the northern section of the 1,420km (880-mile) Alice Springs to Darwin Trans-Continental railway vision which began in the 1870’s and was finally completed on 17 September 2003.

And so our tale continues...

In 1942, the American involvement in the north Australian air war was being directed from “the Porch of the Birdum Hotel” and it was rumoured that General Douglas Macarthur was at the Hotel at some time during that period and gave the Order for the Coral Sea Battle..


Birdum proved too wet during the rainy season so the town of Larrimah was established by the Military during WWII with the gradual shift of the railhead from Birdum to Larrimah for the movement of troops and supplies to Darwin.

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    The Hotel building was finally relocated to Larrimah in 1957. Over the years since its move to Larrimah, the Wayside Inn has had a succession of publicans, many of them characters themselves who have added to the hotel’s reputation. The Giant Stubby, Lake Larrimah, the Pink Panther and the Larrimah Zoo gave the hotel some notoriety and there are many, many tales to be told about the publicans and the icons.

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