PRACTICAL jokers are to be found everywhere, and even in our little town (of Wollongong, NSW) there is no exception to the rule. A day or two ago one of these practical jokers was at work in one of our… Read More ›
Illawarra Hotels
Brewery truck crash provides free beer on Bulli Pass
FOR five hours after a beer truck had crashed while coming down Bulli Pass, last night, sightseers sat on the side of the roadway drinking free beer. They came from as far afield as Fairy Meadow and Wollongong to join… Read More ›
Arrest of a Supposed Madman
A BULLI SENSATION BULLI. Tuesday – A man named John Reynolds, who was discharged last week from the lunatic asylum, became dangerously mad this morning. Reynolds, with his brother, was sent several months ago to the asylum, suffering from religious… Read More ›
Kiwi publican hosted Sydney’s grandest hotels before murdering his wife and taking his own life
By MICK ROBERTS © THE life of one of Sydney’s most successful publicans, a man who hosted some of the harbour city’s grandest tourist hotels, ended tragically in 1935 after he murdered his wife while she slept, and he then… Read More ›
Fire destroyed Albion Park’s Commercial Hotel
ESTABLISHED in 1880, the Albion Park Hotel, located in the Illawarra region of NSW, was originally built by English pioneer, Gabriel Timbs. Timbs was a native of Berkshire, England. He was born in 1824, and came to the colony of… Read More ›
Man Struck by Lorry; Hurled into Hotel Bar
A MAN was struck by a runaway semi-trailer lorry on Friday and knocked through the doorway into the public bar of the Wollongong Hotel. The man, George Scott, 58, of 91 Corrimal street, Wollongong, had just had a drink in the bar and walked out… Read More ›
Jim Martin, the modest, heroic publican
By MICK ROBERTS © JAMES Alexander Martin was said to be a modest man. So much so, he managed to keep from an official government inquest in 1914 how he saved the life of a drowning man. Jim Martin was… Read More ›
George Tory’s Kiama Hotel
By MICK ROBERTS & MICHELLE HOCTOR © KIAMA Inn is the oldest business in Kiama Municipality having operated from the same site – on the south-east corner of Terralong and Shoalhaven Streets – continuously since 1853. After Wollongong’s Harp Hotel,… Read More ›
The Bulli Creek Hotel
Yes… There’s another Bulli, besides in the Illawarra, NSW. Bulli Creek is located south west of Toowoomba in Queensland on the Darling Downs. And yes, there is also another Bulli pub, besides the Illawarra’s Heritage Hotel… Well, kind-of… Bulli Creek… Read More ›
Need glasses? See an Optician!
DURING the 1940s, publicans were experiencing unprecedented theft of beer glasses from their pubs. One newspaper reported more than 700,000 glasses had disappeared from Sydney’s 600 metropolitan hotels in 1944, “In an amazing wave of petty thieving”. Hotels lost an average of 60 glasses… Read More ›