Author Archives
A journalist, writer and historian, Mick Roberts specialises in Australian cultural history, particularly associated with Australian pubs. Mick has had an interest in revealing the colourful story of Australian hotels or pubs and associated industries for over 35 years. Besides writing a number of history books, Mick has managed several community newspapers. Editorially, he has managed 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 reported for Rural Press, Cumberland (News Limited), City Hub Sydney (City News), and Torch Publications (based in Canterbury Bankstown, Sydney).
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Wollongong’s ‘Upper Crown Street Push’, were ‘artistic types’, who met at the Royal Alfred Hotel
By MICK ROBERTS © LONG before the Sydney Push met in pubs around the harbour city, a group of “theatrical types, well primed with soda and a dash” paved the way for artists by reciting poetry and “warbling” songs in… Read More ›
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Regents Park Hotel, Regents Park
Salvationist Arrested: Hotel Scene Lidcombe police yesterday charged a Salvation Army captain with “disorderly conduct” at the Regents Park hotel. The publican, Mr. Eric McLean, asked police to make the charge after the captain had gone into the hotel with… Read More ›
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War time pub drinking: A glass by candlelight and beer shortages
Limits were placed on beer production by the Australian Government in March 1942, requiring breweries to reduce their output to two-thirds of previous levels. The resulting beer shortages led to widespread profiteering and black-marketing in some parts of Australia, including… Read More ›
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Sly grog on the South Coast Railway
DURING the construction of the NSW South Coast railway during the mid to late 1880s, railway camps sprung up in the “wild countries” between the scattered settlements throughout the Illawarra region. The wildest of the railway camps catered for the… Read More ›
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Illawarra’s first clubs: ‘The bar room had a plank nailed to the wall for seating’… and beds ‘for drunken miners to sleep off their liquor’
BY MICK ROBERTS© REGISTERED clubs, with their assortment of restaurants, bars and cafes, gymnasiums, and ‘mini-casinos’, have come along way from the timber cottages, offering dominoes and newspaper and magazine libraries, that began to appear throughout colonial New South Wales… Read More ›
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Flash light greeted Mrs Riley’s drinkers after hours
By MICK ROBERTS © DURING the days of the ‘six o’clock swill’, after last drinks were called at Thirroul’s Ryan’s Hotel – at the time, the town’s only pub – swathes of men would stagger down the road to continue… Read More ›
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The Floyds: Illawarra’s beef & beer barons
By MICK ROBERTS © FOR over a century beef and beer were synonymous with the Floyd family name. Four generations of Floyds were successful butchers and hoteliers in the northern region of the Illawarra, south of Sydney, leaving a legacy… Read More ›
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Donkey Jack’s 30 year drinking spree
By MICK ROBERTS © COMPARED by one 19th century scribe to Shakespeare’s Caliban from the Tempest, the legendary Donkey Jack was Wollongong’s best known drunk. Of all the drunken characters who frequented the Illawarra – and there were many –… Read More ›
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Corrimal pub’s most celebrated barmaid
By MICK ROBERTS © ABOUT the same time as the Corrimal Hotel opened for business on the NSW South Coast almost 120 years ago, quite a lot of excitement was being created by “a small coterie of feminine busybodies” to… Read More ›
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Unlucky pub roustabout was killed by a train while on his way to collect a £30,000 inheritance
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… Read More ›