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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Cheap beer packs the bar
Right around the bar, with mug in each hand, they stand in a Goulburn hotel (NSW) where the price of beer has been reduced to four pence a mug. And it’s perfect weather for it. – Daily Standard Brisbane, Thursday… Read More ›
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Sydney’s smallest pub frontage
WITH less than four feet (1.22m) facing George Street, Scruffy Murphy’s is said to have the smallest frontage of a pub in Sydney. The pub, originally known as the Goulburn Hotel, was purchased by Sydney brewery, Tooheys Limited in 1930…. Read More ›
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Side stepping ‘the swill’
TWO regular customers at a Goulburn Street hotel in Sydney discovered how to get quick service “during the peak-hour rush”, reported ‘Column 8’ in the Sydney Morning Herald on August 12 1950. Sydney’s pubs, during these years, were at the… Read More ›
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George Street hooligans
ALMOST A RIOT. About 10 o’clock on Saturday night Constable McDaniel saw a woman ejected from a Goulburn-street hotel (Haymarket) by two barmaids. He arrested her, and, at first she was going easily enough, but a man called out to… Read More ›
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Commercial Hotel, Dorrigo
FIRST TIME IN HISTORY ? It’s the first time a Scotsman has been seen to leave a beer on the bar while he left the room, said an eye witness one day last week. We have it through ‘the grape vine’… Read More ›
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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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Road Trip: 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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Road Trip: Minmi’s last pub
THE Minmi Hotel is the last ‘man standing’ in a coal mining settlement that once boasted a dozen places where the inhabitants could ‘wet their whistle’. By the late 1870s, the township had 500 men employed at the local colliery… Read More ›