WHEELBARROW BUG BITES PINGELLY FOR A £10 SIDE WAGER, Bert Wilson, a Pingelly blacksmith (WA), pushed Ben Jackson (sitter) in a barrow from Brookton to Pingelly (12½ miles) in 5 hours, 14 minutes. The wager was that the distance would… Read More ›
Western Australia hotels
Niagara Hotel, Niagara WA
THE township of Niagara was said to be unique in having four hotels, one on each corner of the crossroads, in the centre of the township. Niagara is an abandoned town located in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, between Kalgoorlie and Leonora, 12km southwest of Kookynie. The first pub… Read More ›
Grand Hotel Coolgardie
THE hotel pictured on this page is undoubtedly one of the finest structures on the [gold] fields. Situated in a commanding position on a rise at the corner of Lefroy and Sylvester streets, its magnificent proportions compel the attention and… Read More ›
The man who invented the ‘lock-nut’, entrepreneur James H. Shekleton was also a bush publican
By MICK ROBERTS © NOT far from where once a long-forgotten bush pub traded, 450kms east of Perth in the Western Australian outback, sits the lonely grave of Scotsman, Tom Davidson. The goldfields of Western Australia are a strange last… Read More ›
Uncle Obadiah wasn’t impressed with family friendly pubs: ‘We used to play darts with crowbars and the barmen buried the losers’
WHEN a progressive publican spent £2,000 in 1946 making his Western Australian goldfields’ hotel family friendly, he came in for some criticism from the old-guard; those who thought pubs should be exclusively for the pleasures of men, and strictly for… Read More ›
Oroya Palace Hotel, Sandstone
SANDSTONE is a small town in the Mid West region of Western Australia, 661km north of Perth. The town was first settled in 1894 as part of a gold rush. By 1907 the population of the town had swelled to over 6,000 and it… Read More ›
The old ‘Conti’ pub, Broome: ‘a great, ugly edifice, but oh, so charming’…
LIKE Broome of old, the original Continental Hotel, in Western Australia’s Kimberley, has made way for the new. In his book, ‘Australian Pubs’, John Larkins described the original corrugated iron pub, with its cooling verandah slung along its front, as… Read More ›
An old English pub in the Australian outback: The Duke of Cornwall Hotel, Kalgoorlie
The presence of an old English pub in the dry, dusty goldfields of Western Australia, must have had a few inhabitants of Kalgoorlie scratching their heads when it first opened for business at the turn of last century. The Duke… Read More ›
The beer drinking moths of Derby
LIFE is tough, mighty tough in Derby, in the far north-west of Western Australia. There the moths not only invade the bar and hamper people drinking, but also mop up the beer themselves. There’s not much to do in Derby… Read More ›