The ex-Dora Dora Hotel, a place of legends beside the Murray River

After I got back from the bar with Rex Beaver’s second tumbler of water, at the Jingellic Hotel he told me about giving up the fags.

“I used to love smoking but in ’82 I just gave it up one day and never thought about it again. I’ve got will power to do things like that. Like drinking.”

Rex first gave up beer in 1974 and kept off it for nine years, “just because”. Then he went dry again in the ‘90’s when saving for his house and then he quit again in 2005 and has stayed with the soft stuff ever since.

“Make no mistake, I’ve loved every mouthful of beer I’ve ever had and the next one will be sweet,” but right now he’s doing just fine.

I told him I was headed down-river to check out the ex-Dora Dora pub.

“Aaaah,  had my first drink at that place.  I just went down there one Saturday and I decided it was time I had a drink so I went into the bar and old Alf Wright was there and he hadn’t met me before.  It was an ordinary 7 ounce beer and I thought,” Rex smiled and paused and his voice dropped an octave, “that’s beautiful!”

Rex had good memories of the Dora Dora pub and of Alf and his who ran the place. For years Rex shore the few sheep they kept behind the pub and it was evident every memory he had was a fond one.

“In the pub he had a museum, everything from long bits of wool that hadn’t been shorn for years, he had a joystick from a zero aeroplane and all sorts of stuff. But then Alf died in the late 80’s and the pub closed a bit after that.”

Rex had stuff to do back up at his house so I walked out the back of the and once he’d got his mower running, we said our goodbyes and off he went, blades up seeing he’d cut the footpaths a coupla days earlier.

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So a bit later I point Super Ten west into the afternoon sun, and after just on 20kms of dirt road which kissed the river maybe half a dozen times and which passes through some of the most glorious country in the upper Murray, suddenly I’m outside a beautifully maintained squat tranquil building on my right.

No-one’s too sure just exactly when the first pub at Dora Dora, Talmalmo served its first glass of hooch. Best I can do is point to a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald of October 13th 1848 headed, “Claims to Leases of Crown Lands Beyond Settled Districts”.

Claim number 90 was made by a bloke named Henry Jeffries:

“Name of run, Dora Dora. Estimated area, twenty thousand acres. Estimated grazing capabilities, one thousand three hundred cattle. This run is upon the northern bank of the Hume, about twenty-five miles above the junction of the Miteah Miteah with the Hume.”

In 1894 politician William Lyne, who was to lead the search for the site for the national capital advertised in the local papers that, following a Friday campaign meeting in Jingellic,

he’d be holding a similar rally at “Costelloe’s”.  This was surely the Dora Dora Pub.

A coupla years later in 1896 that the pub is mentioned, in a piece entitled Talmalmo and which names Mr Patrick Costello of the Dora Dora Hotel

So let’s go for sometime around 1890 as the beginning of the madness and the brothership of the Dora Dora and Jingellic pubs.

A bit before this , in 1881, the NSW Parliament had passed the " Licensing Act of 1882" with the stated aim of making, “better provision in respect to the licensing and regulation of Publicans and Public-bouses and to amend and embody in one Statute the laws regulating the sale of liquor”.

Amongst its provisions down at clause 34 was a new regulation to give local communities a voice in the granting of liquor licenses in their areas and neighbourhoods This was a great victory for the anti-hotel forces and came to be known as ‘local option’.

Local Option Courts met throughout the new colony to issue licenses to public houses and to wine grocers and to also remove such licenses as they sought fit.

In July 1908 the Local Options Court met at Albury for its quarterly hearings. As usual, their aim was to trim and regulate the number of hotels and wine licenses in the Albury, Germanton (now Holbrook) and Tumbarumba areas.

Sergeant Graham, the licensing inspector for Tumbarumba ‘reported unfavourably regarding…… The Bridge Hotel, Jingellic’ and Sergeant Healy, his counterpart at Germanton likewise advised of his disfavour for the Dora Dora Hotel, Talmalmo.

After hearing the various reports, the Bench retired for about 20 minutes, and on returning His Honour Judge Gibson announced that they had decided to call upon a number of applicants to appear before the Court on Tuesday, August 11:

The Dora Dora Hotel was spared any further inquisition but “Jos. Bell of the Bridge Hotel, Jingellic” was amongst those called back the following month for further examination.

But if he’d lost sleep worrying about the future of his riverside pub, he needn’t have.

The Albury Banner and Wodonga Express reported on the subsequent hearing:

Mr. Belbridge appeared for the licensee. Sergeant Graham stated that he inspected the hotel on July 22. An hotel at Jingellic was a public convenience, and if the present house was properly kept he would be prepared to withdraw his objection. Under his instructions a sum of money had been spent in repairs. The present licensee had been approved by witness. He was aware that Jingellic was being offered for sale, and that would cause more settlement. The nearest hotel (probably the Dora Dora) was 17 miles away on one side and 36 miles the other way. Superintendent Elliott, of Albury, stated that he travelled the district a good deal, and ' considered a hotel at Jingellic a convenience to the travelling public.

The previous keeper of the hotel appeared, testifying that it wasn't a bad little earner: “the trade of the house had been good — about £15 a week. The bar receipts would be about half the total. There were 44 electors on the electoral roll, and 200 or 300 people altogether.”

The court retired to consider its decisions. When it resumed, Judge Gibson announced its decision to the effect that four hotels and one wineshop would be closed after the lapse of varying periods, but Jingellic’s Bridge Hotel wasn't amongst the doomed. Like its neighbor down stream at Dora Dora, its immediate future was safe.

Patrick Costello must’ve made a pretty good fist of the Dora Dora pub. The only mentions of it in the papers for the next couple of decades were filled with praise.

From a 1900 correspondent travelling with a visiting cricket team to do battle with the locals: “ (we) soon reached the Dora Dora Hotel, where a hearty welcome awaited us (and each of us) … satisfied the inner man……. (a)t the conclusion of the last game the winning team was treated to a sumptuous tea at Costello's Hotel.”

And four years later from another visiting cricket team: “The team put up at the Dora Dora Hotel, kept by …. Mr Patrick Costello, who with his good wife and family did all in their power to make the nomads' comfortable, and right well did they succeed…… the Germanton boys were entertained by the other side, and sat down to a dinner that would do credit to many large hotels.”

Then, with a hint at the tradition which was developing and would live long at the pub, the scribe added: “To say anything of what took place after supper would be superfluous, but I can with safety say it was a night of nights, a veritable 'long night.'”

And then in 1930 the Farmer and Settler newspaper published a ‘Murray Valley Vignette’

“At Talmalmo there is a cosy bush inn, the Dora Dora Hotel.  So little evidence of settlement is visible in the vicinity that one wonders how a tavern could flourish in such a lonesome spot, but people dwell in the hills, and aforetime there was a little school nearby that tells of a generation come to manhood. The inn prospers indeed. I sat on its verandah one tranquil Sabbath afternoon with the proprietor, a veteran of the valley, and listened to his tales of the old days, bushman, pioneer and publican, he is one of the old school so fast vanishing, a characteristic type of the rugged, big-hearted generation of last century.”

In 1947, just two years after being de-mobbed from the artillery, Alf Wright bought the Dora Dora Hotel, and the fun really, and I mean, really, started.

In 1965 the Australian Womens Weekly sent a journo down to see what the fuss was all about. Their writer was amused by a sign out front warning to “Beware of the Agapanthus” and by another offering “Free Beer Tomorrow”. Inside he was fascinated by the memorabilia, souvenirs and junk taking up every square inch.

He wrote of, “…. a collection of curios, relics, antiquities, and natural history; objects of art mingled with war souvenirs, an old-time arsenal among misshapen bottles, foreign coins, etc.”

You’ve gotta love an “old-time arsenal”!

Back at the Bridge Hotel at Jingellic, after Rex had left on his mower, I’d gone inside and found Peter, self-described ‘chief bottle washer’  behind the bar.  He’s spent a lifetime working in pubs, from Tocumwal to Narromine, managing, owning, fixing up busted ones.

He pointed to the wall beside the bar: “ I remember sitting up against that wall when I was 8, maybe 10 with my dad whilst we were supposed to be on a fishing trip.”

And as he grew up he continued to visit until, finally wearied by the pub life, in 2001 with his wife, bought a small riverside farm 20 minutes down the road. The place is called, ‘Dunpubbin’.

He asked me where I was headed and when I told him firstly west to Dora Dora he ran his hand over the top of his head and told me just how lucky he was to’ve had a drink or few with Alf and Emma in the Dora Dora Hotel.

The first time Peter ever went there it was with some local mates on their motorbikes.  It was on a fishing trip.  The anglers club was across from the pub, and a bend of the Murray just a hundred metres away.

They’d arrived early and had a bit of success and around 10.30 ish Peter told his mates it might be time for a drink.

“Nah, the pub ain’t open yet.”

“It’s gotta be. It’s after ten, it’s gotta be open by now,” said the thirsty Peter.

“Nah, mate, it’s not open.”

“Well how do ya know that?” asked the new chum seeing as they couldn't see the pub from the river edge.

“You’ll know when it’s open.”

The other blokes laughed and kept on cleaning their catches.

So, what Peter didn't know was that old Alf really did have an arsenal. It included  a few rifles and shotties and amongst his collection was an old black powder flintlock long barrel.

On weekends, when Alf was ready to open the doors and start serving drinks, he’d stuff the gunpower into his antique rifle, head out the front of the pub and point the thing in the air.

As Peter sat around with no more fish to clean that first morning,

BOOM!

“The sound was immense, the whole river valley echoed with this fucking explosion. I thought maybe the pub’d blown up. It was deafening!”

Peter’s mate fixed on him and smiled: “Pub’s open.”

What followed was one of those aforementioned, “veritable long nights”.

As for the rest of his arsenal, Peter reckons they got well used:

“He had a collection of them and when he’d hear a coach or a tourist van coming up the road he’d grab a unloaded long arm and go and stand in the middle of the road, force the bus driver to stop and order them all out of the vehicle and into the pub.”

In his excellent memoir, “Country Undertaker, Reminiscences of a bush life”, author Jim Eames recalled his childhood monthly visits to the Dora Dora with his parents.

“Mum, my brother Pete and I would spend the afternoon swimming and Dad would spend the afternoon drinking. So everyone was reasonably happy.”

And whilst the river that never ran dry was an attraction the biggest magnet, “was Alf Wright. As far as publicans go, nobody came anywhere near Alf. …. Here was a bloke who looked like Bud Abbott—short and chubby with dark, slicked-back hair and dark horn-rimmed glasses. Alf wore a permanent smile on his oval face as he told endless yarns and played practical jokes on any unsuspecting motorist who called in for a drink, much to the delight of the regulars. A quick-change expert, one minute Alf was asking a visitor what he wanted to drink, then dropping out of sight behind the bar to re-emerge in a gorilla suit to hand over the beer. Other times he’d walk out the pub’s front door and come back a few minutes later as a British army officer, all uniform, moustache and tin hat. People came from miles away to have a drink at the Dora Dora Pub because, thanks to Alf and his unique establishment, its fame had spread well beyond the banks of the Murray.”

Alf Wright passed away in the ‘90’s and in 1998 his daughter sold the pub’s license and the Dora Dora Hotel closed for the last time.

When I pull up, sadly, there’s no sign of the madness or of the goodness that was this pub and its legendary owner. Thankfully the place which was last listed for sale for just $130,000 is obviously in hands of caring, loving and respectful owners. And not a shotgun in sight.

I scout around and get some photos but can’t get close to imagining how much fun this place must’ve been. And as I ride west toward the Wymah Ferry I start to think of Lester at Middleton, of Michael at Hungerford, of Peter at Fords Bridge, and of the late Mary Crawley at Barringun.

I think of a dozen publicans out in their bush pubs who are no doubt RIGHT NOW making people feel special and creating memories that won’t be erased. Alf Wright was special but it’d be wrong to say he was “one of a kind” for his kind are still out there and it’s the duty of nobodies like me to do all we can to ensure these living treasures of the bush continue to enrich the landscape of our lives.