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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Flee fire in hotel
CUSTOMERS with drinks in their hands rushed out of the bar of the Bald Face Stag Hotel, Petersham, when it caught fire yesterday. The blaze began in the rear bar of the hotel when some tins of paint caught fire. Within… Read More ›
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Stepney Hotel, Alexandria
By MICK ROBERTS © JUST why Italian immigrant and Alexandria publican, Benjamin Lafiura prematurely ended his life in such an agonising method will probably never be known. Like the small two storey corner pub where he ended his 48… Read More ›
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Publican takes it easy
Mr John Dorahy, president of the Illawarra branch of the U.L.V.A. (Later Australian Hotels Association), and licensee of the Wollongong Hotel, spent last Thursday ‘resting up,’ when employees at his hotel decided to join in a stoppage for 24 hours… Read More ›
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Ye Olde Narrogin Inn, Armadale
PERTH, Tuesday: A hotel useful reached for a switch to start an electric pump in a flooded cellar today and fell dead. He was Sydney George McGrath, 42, of Ye Olde Narrogin Inn, Armadale (WA). Licensee William Gaynor told police he… Read More ›
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Royal Hotel, Parkes
PLUCKY WOMAN Pluckily facing an intruder who had climbed over the balcony, Mrs Chesterton, wife of the licensee of the Royal Hotel, at Parkes (NSW), pointed a bunch of nickel keys at him, forced him into a room, the door… Read More ›
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Sir John Young Hotel, Sydney
FATAL HOTEL AFFRAY SYDNEY, Monday. A fatal quarrel took place at the Sir John Young Hotel, George-street, tonight. A man named Thomas Jones, aged 48, a wharf laborer, and another man, both being under the influence of liquor, quarrelled and… Read More ›
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Yowie Bay publican charged with cancer suffering wife’s manslaughter
THE publican of the Yowie Bay Hotel, south of Sydney, made headlines around the country in 1905 when he attempted suicide after the death of his 42-year-old wife. The pretty little pub traded from 1903 to 1918 and was located… Read More ›
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Jealous lover and Fremantle’s Federal Hotel double murder- suicide
The Federal’s violent past revealed By MICK ROBERTS © FREMANTLE’S Federal Hotel was the scene of a gruesome double murder in 1927, when Lillian Martin and her three-year-old son Daniel were found dead in an upstairs bedroom of the building…. Read More ›
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Bottles by the thousands
Christmas cheer – Bottles everywhere but not a drop to drink! People who spent days asking in different hotels for bottle beer in vain will not get much satisfaction from this collection of ’empties’ in a corner of a Newcastle… Read More ›
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St Andrews Hotel, Victoria
BOMB THROWN ON TO ROOF OF HOTEL MELBOURNE. Tuesday. A bomb, which was thrown on to the roof of the St. Andrew’s Hotel, Queenstown 25 miles from Melbourne, at 9 o’clock last night, blew a hole in the corrugated iron roof… Read More ›