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Posted: 2024-06-16 03:01:11

On Sundays in Gascoyne Junction, the local pub's kitchen is a one-man show. 

Pots are simmering and the oven door creaks as Olashinde Omotosho scans trays of roasted vegetables. He swivels and swings a ladle in a series of controlled arcs.

Peas. Potatoes. Beef. Gravy.

An Aussie roast, he has learned the hard way to serve simply and straight up.

A middle aged man leans over pots and plates in a kitchen.

Dinner service can be demanding work at the only pub in town.(ABC News: Alistair Bates)

"You need to know what your community wants," Mr Omotosho said.

"When I first started, I used to do fancy food.

"Australians want classic food, nice but not too expensive."

The cook's commitment to quality is uncompromising and remarkable for a tiny outback community 1,000 kilometres north-east of Perth.

Here, the pub moonlights as a roadhouse, general store, swimming pool and caravan park.

A roadhouse as the sun rises.

The Gascoyne Junction Pub & Tourist Park is an unofficial hub for the community.(ABC News: Alistair Bates)

"Fresh veggies, no frozen nothing," Mr Omotosho said.

"This remote, you don't wait for one ingredient [for] a week, for two weeks. You need to know what you can put together.

"People started to say, 'oh wow, this food is not bad.'"

From Nigeria to Australia, via South Africa

All roads to Gascoyne Junction are long but Mr Omotosho has travelled a particularly far way.

Born in Nigeria, he migrated with his family to South Africa in 2013.

Training at culinary school by day, he worked in a fine-dining restaurant in Pretoria by night, winning national awards.

A middle aged man leans over pots and plates in a kitchen.

Mr Omotosho trained at culinary school in South Africa.(ABC News: Alistair Bates)

"It was a big challenge for me," he said.

"Within two years, when we win the award, I was sous chef … from griller to chef de partie, chef de partie to sous chef."

But Mr Omotosho eyed a move further afield.

"Life was tough. I was earning good money, but [there was] not enough time with my family, with my kids," he said.

He rolled the dice by answering an advertisement on Gumtree's digital marketplace in 2016.

A middle aged man leans over pots and plates in a kitchen.

The Nigerian chef travelled to Australia after answering an online job advertisement.(ABC News: Alistair Bates)

A Perth restaurant needed a chef and with the job came an opportunity for visa sponsorship.

"I don't know how to express my feeling, my happiness," Mr Omotosho said.

"Australia is my dream country."

An outback town missing its 'focal point'

Leaving his family in South Africa, the newly-minted chef headed to Perth to get settled.

Within months, however, the restaurant shut its doors.

"The restaurant closed down before the visa was approved," Mr Omotosho said.

"But [the owner] had another restaurant.

"He said, do you want to move to Gascoyne Junction? I said yes."

Damaged building materials in front of a partly intact building.

The 100-year-old Gascoyne Junction Pub was demolished after severe flooding in 2010. (ABC Rural: Richard Hudson)

Home to just 70 permanent residents, Gascoyne Junction had faced a tumultuous change of its own.

John McCleary has been Shire of Upper Gascoyne CEO for eight years.

When he took up the role, he said the remote town was struggling to regain its "focal point" after major flooding.

Sitting at the confluence of the Gascoyne and Lyons rivers, the region's worst flood on record had inundated the old pub in 2010.

Three years passed before the shire could raise enough funds from the state government to rebuild the watering hole at a new location.

A pool table sits under a veranda in front of a garden.

Works were completed on the new pub in 2013.(ABC News: Alistair Bates)

"It was designed for that very purpose of community," Mr McCleary said.

"Somewhere to go to tell stories and whatever else you get up to in a tavern."

The arrival of Mr Omotosho, or Chef Omo as he has become affectionately known, was an unexpected salve.

"A community like this … particularly in the summer, it's extreme heat and a lot of dirty, dusty, hard type work," he said.

"To be able to come back to a place like the junction pub and have a gentle soul like Omo, it's really refreshing."

'Middle of nowhere'

Mr Omotosho's wife, Kenny, had reservations before joining her husband with their kids in 2018.

It was her first time in Australia, having flown from Johannesburg to Perth.

"We took a two-hour flight to Carnarvon. OK, I thought we were there," she said.

She didn't realise another two-hour journey in a car, dodging cattle along unfenced roads, lay ahead.

"I was in the middle of nowhere. I was like, are you sure there is a place here?"

Drone shot from the air of a brown and green river, a bridge crossing it and a small town in the background.

Gascoyne Junction is home to about 70 permanent residents and surrounded by cattle stations.(ABC News: Kate Ferguson)

Still, it didn't take long for her to embrace the new surroundings and take a job at the local school.

"It's been a long journey for us," she said.

"We are lucky to be here. Getting to know the community, the people are so awesome."

Their family of five now hopes to gain Australian citizenship later this year.

One thing unlikely to change though is Chef Omo's feelings on the local cuisine.

"He's never been a traditional type, sausages and mash type of fella," Mr McCleary said.

"Always just a bit different to see what good ol' Omo will come up with."

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