The former Park View Hotel, now known as the Wagon Wheel Hotel at St Marys. Photo: Google Street View.
Park View Hotel, St Marys 1949. This is how the hotel looked when the riot took place. Picture: Noel Butlin Archives, Australian National University
RIOT OVER BEER
SYDNEY. December 21.— Windows were smashed and beer glasses hurled when 300 workers demonstrated outside the Park View Hotel, St. Mary’s, 35 miles from Sydney, early to-night. The demonstration was a protest at the hotel’s policy on Christmas bottle beer issue! Six men, including a local councillor were arrested by squads of police who arrived in two cars and a truck to quell the riot.
– Townsville Daily Bulletin Tuesday 22 December 1953
McCarthy’s Park View Hotel, St Marys, 1930. Picture: Noel Butlin Archives, Australian National University
The Waggon Wheel Hotel, St Marys 1959, just prior to major alterations and renovations. Picture: Noel Butlin Archives, Australian National University
The Waggon Wheel Hotel, St Marys after the major alterations and renovations in 1960. Picture: Noel Butlin Archives, Australian National University
A brief history….
The Park View Hotel, St Marys in the early 1900s. Picture: Supplied
James William Bennett built the Volunteer Hotel and established his wheelwrights business on this site in 1859.
The hotel was renamed the Park View after World War One and in 1956 the sign was again changed to the ‘Waggon Wheel’.
During late 1959 the hotel was remodelled and retains much the same appearance as it does today (2020).
The hotel is significant as the site upon which the Bennett family established what was to become an important local industry, and the forerunner of the Bennett Wagon Works. In the late 1990s the name of the hotel reverted back to the name Park View. In 2006 it was renamed The King of the Mountain, and today it is again known as the ‘Wagon Wheel’.
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Categories: Australian Hotels, NSW hotels
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