By MICK ROBERTS © A RESOURCEFUL woman, who outlived two publican husbands, Margaret Leahy made a few ‘firsts’ during her life as a South Australian hotelier. At the helm of one of the state’s oldest trading pubs, she was one of… Read More ›
Adelaide hotels
Adelaide’s last barmaid: When women were barred from behind the bar
UNLIKE NSW, where barmaids were more plentiful than barmen in hotel public bars, women were as scarce as hens’ teeth in the pubs of South Australia and Victoria for many decades during last century. From 1908 until 1967 no woman… Read More ›
Commercial Hotel is Port Adelaide’s oldest licensed pub
The Commercial Hotel is the oldest surviving licensed pub in Port Adelaide, South Australia. The Commercial Inn was established in 1841, but gutted by fire in 1857. Rebuilt as the Commercial Hotel in 1869, the pub continues to trade at… Read More ›
Rebel Irish flag at Adelaide hotel
A genuine Sinn Fein (Irish rebel) flag, over 50 years old, flew outside the Southern Cross Hotel in King William street yesterday in observance of St. Patrick’s Day. The manager of the Southern Cross (Mr. M. C. Flannagan) said the… Read More ›
Golfers tee-off with milk and rum before making a strategic beer break
The annual AIF tourney was played at Kooyonga Golf Club, in Adelaide’s west during the 1950s. Players set out fortified by a rum and milk and during the round refreshed themselves from a keg of beer set up in a… Read More ›
Walter sat at the same table in Adelaide’s Exchange Hotel for 42 years
By MICK ROBERTS © WHEN the Exchange Hotel was demolished in February 1960, it ended more than 120 years of Adelaide’s history. In fact, it destroyed the city’s oldest pub. There had been a hotel on the north-east corner of… Read More ›
Car runs into the bar of Adelaide’s Selborne Hotel
A MISBEHAVED MOTOR RUNS INTO HOTEL BAR. ADELAIDE. Tuesday. The unexplained vagaries of a motor car caused some excitement in Pirie-street today. After capsizing a buggy, it swung across the road, knocked down a cyclist, missed a row of verandah posts by fractions of… Read More ›
Southern Cross Hotel, Adelaide
By MICK ROBERTS © THE bloodied body of 29-year-old George Norton, found at the rear steps of the Southern Cross Hotel in Adelaide one Summer night in 1954 immediately sparked the suspicion of authorities. Police at first suspected foul play, but… Read More ›
St Leonards Inn: A South Australian pub hosted by a family for almost a century
AFTER an unbroken record of close to 90 years the licence of the St Leonards Inn, in the South Australian bayside town of Glenelg, finally left the McDonald family on September 11 1933. The pub had been handed down among… Read More ›