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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
By MICK ROBERTS © RELIGIOUSLY, during most of the first half of last century, a steady stream of men could be seen crossing the road, backwards and forwards, from Bulli’s Family Hotel to the billiard and hairdressing saloon, on Saturdays…. Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © AMERICA’S Wild West could be considered tame compared to the wilderness separating what is today Sydney’s southern suburbs from the Illawarra region, during the mid to late 1880s. Notorious shantytowns sprang up in the bushland to… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © THE workers camps that sprang up for the men building the government railway south of Sydney during the mid to late 1880s became notorious for their violence and heavy drinking. The camps, which also included men… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © SAM Russell just wasn’t cut out to be a businessman. To be fair, he had to struggle through the economic depression of the 1840s, but the fact remains Lady Luck just wasn’t on the merchant’s side… Read More ›