Author Archives
A newspaper journalist, writer and local historian, Mick Roberts specialises in Australian cultural history, particularly associated with the Australian hotel and liquor industry. Mick has had an interest in revealing the colourful story of pubs, inns and associated industries in the Sydney and Illawarra regions of NSW for over 30 years. He is currently working on a comprehensive history of the hotel and liquor industry in the Illawarra region of NSW. Besides authoring a number of history books, Mick has owned and operated several community newspapers. He was one time editor of the Wollongong Northern News, The Bulli Times, The Northern Times, The Northern Leader and The Local - all located in the Wollongong region. As a journalist he has worked for Rural Press, Cumberland (News Limted), Sydney based, City News, and is now with Torch Publications.
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Empties ma’am?
“Any empty beer bottles, ma’am?” “Do I look as if I drink beer?” “Any empty vinegar bottles?”
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Beer bottle insulators
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Woolpack Hotel, Parramatta
DIES FROM BURNS Mystery Fire In Hotel Room SYDNEY. Friday.— When a room in the Woolpack Hotel, Parramatta, was burning today people, hearing screams, ran in and found Samuel Newlands, 36, lying on the floor gasping and crying out in… Read More ›
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Great Northern Hotel, Teralba
OF the five pubs we visited in the Lake Macquarie area of NSW over the Queens Birthday Long Weekend, the Great Northern at Teralba takes the crown as the most traditional working class watering hole. It’s a ripper. You… Read More ›
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Minmi Hotel
THE Minmi Hotel is the last man standing in a mining settlement that once boasted a dozen places to wet your whistle. By the late 1870s, the township had 500 men employed at the colliery and business was good at… Read More ›
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Museum Hotel, West Wallsend
THE second stop on our visit to West Wallsend district’s watering holes this weekend was Lake Macquarie’s second oldest pub – The Museum Hotel. The West Wallsend pub – the last of the town’s pubs – opened in 1889, and… Read More ›
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The Holmesville Hotel
TO think that the Holmesville Hotel was almost lost as a house of hospitality! Time Gents visited the West Wallsend district in NSW over the weekend, dropping into a few of the historic pubs, on what was rainy, miserable Queens… Read More ›
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The lost pubs of West Wallsend
FOR a little mining town that once had an unquenchable thirst, there’s little wonder six pubs traded at the same time early last century. Today, sadly just one pub remains in West Wallsend. That insatiable thirst seems to have… Read More ›
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Gresham Hotel, Adelaide
HIS WOODEN LEG There were peculiar circumstance attached to a charge of begging at the Port Adelaide Police Court on Saturday. Timothy Byrnes a miner, of Adelaide, was charged, on the information of Inspector J. E. Noblet, with halving gone… Read More ›
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Killingworth Hotel
By MICK ROBERTS © WHEN a group of men went to the Killingworth Hotel, a few days before Christmas 1952, asking for bottles of beer, the bar had been closed for an hour and half. It was way past… Read More ›
