Clare Best: The Pineapple Lady

What has the Noonamah Hotel got to do with pineapples? If it weren’t for pineapples, and a wonderful lady called Clare Best, the Noonamah pub and store wouldn’t be standing on the edge of the Stuart Highway today.

It all started when Clare and Keith (“Snow”) Best bought a block on the Elizabeth River in 1952. It was virgin land, but not for long as the energetic couple began clearing the land by hand and then planting crops. One of the crops which did really well was pineapples. The Bests’ pineapples were sweet, juicy, and had a wonderful texture, better than anything grown in Queensland. But then the Bests had to confront the perennial Territory problem – where is the market?

The answer flashed into Clare Best’s mind one day when she was visiting Sydney. Clare was walking along a central city street when she saw a queue of people waiting to get into a shop selling fresh crushed pineapple juice.

Clare spoke with the owner, and got details of the crushing equipment and recipes for the drinks. “Your only worry is getting the right pineapples” he told her. That wasn’t a problem for Clare, and before long she was selling pineapple juice from a Stuart Highway roadside stall, at Noonamah.

The venture was an immediate success. Passers by stopped for a pineapple drink, others made special weekend trips from Darwin to enjoy the luxury of one of Clare’s fresh, cool drinks. From that humble beginning soon grew the Noonamah store, then the hotel.

Clare Best was an interesting Territorian. Born in the Grampian mountains in Victoria, she had been the first woman to join the Navy in Victoria in 1941. She was a highly skilled wireless telegraphist and showed a special aptitude for receiving Japanese coded signals. She married Keith in Melbourne in 1945, then the couple came north when Keith was posted to Coonawarra naval station.

The Bests sold out their Noonamah venture in the 1960 and moved to a farm at Daly River. Then they retired to Queensland, where Clare died in 1999.