[The Canberra Times Wednesday 31 March 1976] OLD PUB TO HELP BURY ITS PAST The contractor reshaping and covering the mine dumps above Captains Flat, Cleary Brothers Pty Ltd, has bought the Captains Flat Hotel to house 30 employees. Mr Dennis Cleary said yesterday that the hotel had been bought… Read More ›
ONE afternoon in the year 1858 Bill Simpson visited a little weatherboard pub known as The Land We Live Inn for a few rums. The single-storey weatherboard pub traded in the gold-mining town of Sofala, about 40km north of Bathurst on the NSW central tablelands,… Read More ›
THE most commanding building in the township of Jugiong, in the Riverina region of New South Wales, is undoubtedly the Sir George Tavern. An Irish settler, John Philip Sheahan, built the first Sir George Tavern on the banks of the… Read More ›
DURING the 1920s and 30s, a pub on the NSW South Coast became the centre of social life for coal miners in the little town of Bulli. The Bulli Family Hotel, now trading as the Heritage Hotel, opened for business… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © LONG before the Sydney Push met in pubs around the harbour city, a group of “theatrical types, well primed with soda and a dash” paved the way for artists by reciting poetry and “warbling” songs in… 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 ›