Looking back at our trip through the Australian Outback in a safer and more gentle age than the story below, which took place here at Barrow Creek in 2001. Image above is how the hotel looked in 1966

For most of its history Barrow Creek has been an isolated and tiny outpost on the Stuart Highway north of Alice Springs. Then, on 14 July 2001, it became a vital part of one of the Australian outback's most horrific and mystifying crimes. On the night of 14 July, Bradley John Murdoch stopped a VW Kombi van driven by English traveller, Peter Falconio, and persuaded Falconio to leave the vehicle, shot him, tied up Falconio's girlfriend Joanne Lees who, miraculously, managed to escape, hide in the scrub along the highway, and was eventually picked up by a truck driver who took her 13 km south to the Barrow Creek pub where the police were alerted.

Stop, have a drink at the pub (a true outback experience), and think of the bones of Peter Falconio now lying somewhere in the vastness of the Australian outback. If you want to be terrified, watch Wolf Creek - obviously inspired by the crime.