WHEN Thirroul’s Rex Hotel opened for business in 1953, it brought to a close a campaign lasting almost 30 years by brewery giant, Tooth and Company, to have a pub in the seaside town. Known today as ‘Beaches’, the pub,… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © ALTHOUGH today you would be hard pressed to believe it, prior to gentrification, Surry Hills was home to some of Sydney’s toughest pubs. The pubs of the inner-Sydney suburb were haunts of the city’s shadiest characters… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © THE Glenrowan Inn where the bushranger Ned Kelly’s ‘last stand’ took place in 1880 is arguably Australia’s most infamous pub. While the history of bushranger Ned Kelly is well documented, the story of the Glenrowan Inn… Read More ›
The priest and the publican By MICK ROBERTS © THE friendly contest of chaffing – perfected and usually kept within the bar-room – spilled outside onto one of Sydney’s busiest streets during the 1980s. Chaffing – the pleasure of teasing… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © WHEN Jack Ahern took the reins of his first pub at Hamilton, in what is today an affluent riverside suburb in the City of Brisbane, he quickly put his stamp on the popular drinking hole. The Hamilton… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © FOR just over 40 years, bushrangers and desperadoes sheltered under the first incarnation of Mahogany Creek inn’s roof. There they gathered, drinking and yarning around its taproom fire place, joining with stockmen, timber-getters, bullockies, and more… Read More ›
THE number of South Australian pubs – particularly those in its capital, Adelaide – was on the decline at the beginning of the 20th century. The old inns and taverns of early European settlement had steadily grown from when the… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © PUBLICAN Roy Ferguson could be said to have been unlucky in love. The wealthy hotelier had at least three failed relationships with women who would eventually betray him – one fatally. Roy was no saint. In… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © THERE’S no doubt, Berrima’s Surveyor General Inn, on the NSW Southern Highlands, is one of Australia’s oldest trading pubs. Claims though that the pub is Australia’s oldest continuously licensed pub has come under a shadow with… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © WHEN the first public railway in NSW was opened from Redfern to Parramatta in 1855, publican William Stone, to celebrate the occasion, advertised the sale of “buckets of rum for a penny”. Stone had recently opened… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © AN attractive, wealthy woman in her youth, the desire of many of her customers, publican, Isabel Gray, in her twilight years lived a pitiful life in squaller, struggling to make ends meet and battling mental health… Read More ›
THE old pubs of Queensland were recalled by William Lees in an entertaining feature story published in ‘The Queenslander’ newspaper on September 5 1935. In his story, he tells of the shanties and inns of outback Queensland and the legendary… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © THE Mount Garnet Hotel, located 163km south-west of Cairns, has called last drinks. Sadly the historic pub – the town’s last – will close on October 29 2023. The Mount Garnet Hotel posted to its Facebook… Read More ›