It’s 8pm on a Tuesday, and, aside from three men who’ve ridden their motorbikes down from Queensland and are sharing a room in the hotel upstairs, we are the only customers at the Royal Hotel, the last remaining pub in Hill End, population 125.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” asks Steve the bartender. He’s a lanky man with a curious mien – think modern-day Basil Fawlty played by Jarvis Cocker. I’ve politely finished the tequila and soda he served me – I ordered a ginand tonic – and have returned to the bar to buy another round for myself and my photographer.

“The bad news is the till is closed,” he says. A wicked grin spreads across his face. “The good news? Now the drinks are free.”

Apparently we’ve reached the PYO time of night at The Royal, when our barman decides it’s time to sit down with a bottle of red and let his customers “pour your own”. He is one of many curios in Hill End, a small town in the New South Wales Central West, where one-fifth of the residents are artists.

- Ariela Bard