Amid all the gloom and doom, Australia diner delivers pizza and beer by plane

Amid all the coronavirus gloom and doom, a diner is delivering pizza and beer to remote ranches of Australia by plane. The country is strict lockdown since coronavirus cases started rising rapidly.

According to the latest figures, more than 4,400 people have infected coronavirus in Australia while 19 others have died.

The Dunmarra Wayside Inn, a usually bustling roadside diner in Australia's Northern Territory, used a small fixed-wing aircraft for a trial run of what it hopes will become a weekly flying takeaway service to far-flung cattle stations.

"The station that we did send them to absolutely loved them, so much that they ate them for breakfast the next morning," Ben Anderson, the inn's manager and pizza cook, told AFP on Friday.

The business had tried to keep the service under wraps until it was certain the plane deliveries would work. "We've put in a massive pizza oven, which we kept extremely secret," Anderson said.

But news of the tasty drop-off proved too hot to handle, and on Friday he was fielding calls from eager reporters -- with one radio station asking if he could deliver to their studio in Perth, over 3,000 kilometres (1,800 miles) away.

"That's probably a bit out of our range," he said. At the moment, Anderson and his team are only planning to fly to properties within 100 kilometres.

The idea to fly pizzas and other supplies to remote properties was more about supporting those in the area than simply a business venture, the inn's owner Gary Frost told national broadcaster ABC.

"We're just doing it as a friendly gesture to try and help people out,” he said.

(With inputs from agencies)