THERE is nothing in the colony of its sort to rival the rugged scenery of the North Gippsland mountains (Victoria), over which it is necessary to travel in order to reach Omeo and the Glen Wills goldfields. In fine weather… Read More ›
Victoria hotels
Bushfires have been a constant companion of the Kinglake Hotel
By MICK ROBERTS © THE terrifying roar of an approaching bushfire is a sound familiar to many a publican at the Kinglake Hotel – a small Victorian pub established in 1908. Located 56 km north-east of Melbourne, the pub is… Read More ›
Melbourne inns that have gone
A FASCINATING story, published in the Melbourne Argus on August 25, 1945, revealed a glimpse into some of Melbourne’s early inns and hotels. Ernest McCaughan writes in his story that to anyone acquainted with Melbourne in the last century nothing… Read More ›
Gold fever: Publicans sink shafts in the yards of Wedderburn’s two hotels
By MICK ROBERTS © THERE was difficulty ordering a beer, let alone booking a room in Wedderburn’s two pubs in March 1950 when gold fever gripped the sleepy Victorian farming community. A resident unearthed a 175-ounce nugget of gold in… Read More ›
Commercial Hotel, Woods Point, and the glory that was…
Many towns in Australia are but shadows of what they were in the “good old days,” but surely Woods Point (Vic.) beats, them all. According to official figures compiled in the hey-day of gold-mining, it was an evangelist’s heaven. There… Read More ›
Tiny pubs: The Territory’s ‘Dolly Pot’ had a bar 1.2 metres long!
ONE of Australia’s smallest hotels was said to be at Allendale, near Ballarat in Victoria. The pub measured 8 yards [7.3 metres] by 8 yards and was known as the Allendale Hotel. A signboard outside the one bar, one bedroomed… Read More ›
Gipsy Point Hotel, Mallacoota
Joe the bounder in the pub Strangers think they’ve had one too many, but the pub regulars are no longer jumpy when a kangaroo they call Joe breasts the bar By BILL WELLS Joe’s no lounge lizard, but he is… Read More ›
Darlingford Hotel’s ‘watery grave’: How a pub was submerged by Sugarloaf Weir
THE site of the Darlingford Hotel now sits at the bottom of Lake Eildon, a rock and earth-fill embankment dam across the Goulburn River, between the regional towns of Mansfield and Eildon in the Alpine region of Victoria. Darlingford, named… Read More ›
Constable’s beer was kept cool in the pub’s horse watering trough
Keeping the constable’s beer cool THE transfer recently of a senior constable, to a northern Victorian town calls to mind an amusing incident that occurred years ago when the senior, before his promotion, was a constable on street duty in… Read More ›