By Syd Fairs* DURING the mid 1960s when middies of beer were nine cents and schooners a few cents more, customers generally left their copper change on the bars of local pubs where licensees usually donated this money to charity…. 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 MICK ROBERTS © JOHN Ahern was enjoying a few after-work drinks in the upstairs parlour of Surry Hill’s Club Hotel, singing and socialising, before his brutal death in 1893. Barman, Tom Moss, who later became publican, explained at the… Read More ›
Plea of ‘No Beer’ Although State licensing laws prescribe 9am to 9pm for hotel trading, six hotels in Perth‘s city block closed well before 9 o’clock on Saturday night. Reason given in every case was ‘no beer.’ Because of complaints… Read More ›
THIS week an American visitor complained of the way beer is served in Sydney hotels – This week 27 barmaids and barmen employed by a well-known Sydney hotelkeeper, received with their pay envelopes, instructions on the art of pulling… Read More ›
THIS interesting old building, at the corner of Stanley Lane and Riley Street in East Sydney, traded as the Harp of Erin Hotel for almost 50 years. The three ‘harps’ on the facade are the give-away that the building, currently… Read More ›
Kosciuszko Hotel in a picturesque setting, with the freshly fallen snow glistening in the morning sunshine, 1937. Photo: The Brisbane Telegraph.
THIS grainy old image from a 1897 newspaper is the Court Hotel, which was established in what is now an abandoned gold mining town in Western Australia. Bulong was a bustling settlement located 580kms east of Perth in the Goldfields-Esperance… Read More ›
THE pub at Tilpa has more than a century of stories under its belt; although none can top that of the man who built the single storey tin and timber wayside stop, late in the 19th century. Known to… Read More ›
LONG before Kings Cross gained the reputation as Sydney’s number one trouble spot for drunken behaviour, which lead to the controversial lock-out laws, the streets around Wynyard earned a similar status. Police described Wynyard “one of the most undignified public… Read More ›
Drunk again, eh sarge? Ex-Police Sergeant Alfred Bee, of St. John’s Home, Toowong, used to be paid to get drunk one day a week. Each Sunday, he used to stagger from one Brisbane hotel to another until he had to… Read More ›