THE Waterworks Hotel at Botany reached a significant milestone in 2018 when it joined a select number of Sydney pubs that have marked 150 years of trade. Named after the nearby Sydney Waterworks, which was established in 1858, the little… Read More ›
DURING the 1940s, Sydney’s pubs was suffering a persisting problem with customers stealing beer glasses. The problem had been around for decades, but the curious practice of ‘souveniring’ beer glasses from Sydney’s pubs had become a major headache for publicans… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © THE Imperial Hotel at Milson’s Point started life as the Cornish Arms when John Whitford was granted a license in April 1844. Thirty-five-year old Dind, his wife, Eliza, 34, and their 12-year-old son, William Jnr, moved… Read More ›
There’s been a pub trading at the corner of Hay and Dixon Streets in Sydney’s Haymarket for well over 150 years. Way before the Covent Gardens Hotel was established on the site, a pub by the name of the Miller’s… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © JOHN Ahern was enjoying a few after-work drinks in the upstairs parlour of Surry Hill’s Club Hotel, singing and socialising, before his brutal death in 1893. Barman, Tom Moss, who later became publican, explained at the… Read More ›
THIS interesting old building at the corner of Stanley Lane and Riley Street, East Sydney, traded as the Harp of Erin Hotel for almost 50 years. The three ‘harps’ on the facade are the give-away that the building, currently used… Read More ›
EIGHTY years before Kings Cross gained a reputation as a trouble spot for drunken behaviour (which lead to the controversial 2014 Sydney lock-out laws*) the streets around Wynyard had earned a similar status. Police described Wynyard as “one of the… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © A YOUNG barman at Paddington’s Metropolitan Hotel was lucky to have escaped with a £75 good behaviour bond after he was caught smuggling £200 worth of gold out of Australia in 1948. While visiting the subcontinent on a… Read More ›
Belvedere Hotel, Sydney 1930. Picture: Noel Butlin Archives, Australian National University. By MICK ROBERTS © SOME pubs just refuse to die. The Belvedere Hotel at the corner of Kent and Bathurst Street in Sydney’s CBD returned from the dead after closing… Read More ›
As poker machines crept their way into the public bars of Australian pubs in the 1930s, the great debate (which continues to this day) and our fascination with the ‘one-armed-bandits’ was ignited. The Sydney Arrow reported on Friday April 8… Read More ›