DREAMY-EYED with ecstasy, wharfie Gus Girdler, of Stanmore, savours the delicate fragrance of a daffodil in the ‘Blue Room’ of the Harbour View Hotel [Millers Point Sydney]. His fellow flower-lovers are ex-middleweight-champion-now-wharfie Jack Haines (left) and George Olson, of Belmore. Watching the… Read More ›
“Time gents, drink ’em up”, was the barman’s call as six o’clock approached and the taps were turned off for another day. The six o’clock swill was Australian and New Zealand slang for the last-minute rush to buy drinks before the… Read More ›
By ERNEST McCAUGHAN TO ANYONE ACQUAINTED WITH MELBOURNE in the last century nothing is more striking than the disappearance of many popular city hotels. Few today recall their whereabouts, much less their hosts, though some were personalities. The Union Club,… Read More ›
The Exchange hotel, Hindley Street Adelaide, South Australia when Charles Arthur Goldfinch was licensee on June 27 1930. It was a two storey building with a wide verandah upstairs and a balcony decorated with iron lace. There was a hotel… Read More ›
SYDNEY’S oldest wharf laborer, who works at 91, attributes his long life and good health to “plenty work and plenty beer.” He is John ‘Scotty’ Steele, Dargnan-street, Glebe, who was born nine miles from Glasgow in 1855. He presents himself… Read More ›
WE ended our recent road trip to the former gold mining villages and towns of central west NSW by calling into historic Canowindra, located between Orange and Cowra. Where the town’s pubs trade is the curving main street, which is partly an urban… Read More ›
Women favor later hours if they can drink in bars WANT TO SHARE HOTEL FACILITIES WITH MENFOLK Many Sydney women said this week they would vote for later hotel closing hours if they could share hotel facilities fully with their… Read More ›
“A kid of 14 painted a couple of trees on the way home from school, came here, and stuck the picture on the wall in the pub. It was there for months. He came in every day. ‘Have you sold… Read More ›
CONTINUING our road trip to the former gold mining towns of central west NSW, we left the Railway Hotel at Spring Hill for the charm of another single storey brick pub, the Cargo Inn. The drive from Spring Hill, via… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © A drifter, William Price did most odd jobs around the pubs where he worked in return for boarding and lodgings. He did jobs like tapping beer kegs or barrels, to collecting glasses, cleaning toilets, and emptying ashtrays…. Read More ›
I RECKON it’s more than appropriate that a bloke who watched Australia’s first passenger train puff its way between Sydney and Granville in 1855 names his pub the Railway Hotel. Among the thousands of Sydneysiders who gathered… Read More ›