Also, it's worth noting that in Australia, a "hotel" is a bar/pub that may or may not have accommodation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Highway

According to Big G and OSM, it also has a post office, a museum, and a Devonshire tea house. You can't miss the tea house. It's across the street from the road marked "Rubbish Dump."

Also be sure to check out the six-foot-tall plaster Pink Panther in the lawn chair next to the 20-foot-tall beer bottle.

http://ttnotes.com/larrimah-museum.html#gal_post_21157_larri...

Small towns are the same everywhere.

As a lover of small communities ... this part is bad.

In a vacuum, every bit of news is inflated. So the smallest thing becomes something to talk about.

I find European small communities are the right size - but also the right distance i.e. there are others close by, and usually a city not too far off.

In Midwest North America and Australia it's really very isolated.

BTW, colloquially a "hotel" is a pub. Its not impossible town has two watering holes... not one. This is not that dissimilar to a situation I've seen in small Italian rural communities: one drinking hole which the left wing sit at, and one the right wing sit at. (or greece, or half a dozen other rural economies)

You get into an argument with someone in NYC and you can go your own way and never see them again even if you live in the same city or even the same neighborhood. Get into an argument with someone in a small town and everyone knows about it by the time you get home and battle lines get drawn.