Willawarrin Hotel, a village where the tradition of community service lives strong.

So anyway, if you’re on the mid-NSW coast and you head west up the Macleay River from Kempsey, (and why wouldn't you?) the first place you’re going to want to stop is Willawarrin. And when you do maybe force yourself to ride past the pub on your right and pull up just short of the general store on the left and check out the Anzac Memorial.

There’s a new one being slowly erected behind it but take a moment to read and count the names of the locals who fought in both world wars. Look around at the town and try to get a grip on just how a tiny place like this gave so many men to service of their country.

Back in September 1949 my mum was 8 months pregnant with her first child when my father told her he had to go up the bush for a few days.  Dad was pretty devoted so she knew it was important.  A week earlier the worst floods ever recorded had devastated this same Macleay Valley wiping out entire communities and washing away thousands of cattle and sheep.

Dad was working for the RSL and the mob at its Sydney office decided it’d be appropriate to return the favour by showing some support so they crammed a couple cars with nappies, blankets and cans of food and headed north to do what mates do.

He got back ten days before my brother, Rob, was born. Dad died 16 years ago but mum, now 92 remembers freshly his determination to repay a little of the debt to the towns of the Macleay River Valley.

Fifty eight men from this tiny place signed up for WWI of whom 15 didn't return whilst 62 joined for WW2 with four not making it back. There’s 25 surnames listed more than once including one listed 5 times and another an even half dozen.

It’s easy to understand why the RSL sprang into action when the homes of these families, these ex-comrades, were under attack from the elements. I let it sink in, pay my respects and then roll Super Ten down the gentle hill to the pub and head inside.

Gordon’s behind the bar and suggests I move the bike around the back and I tell him right after I finish my first beer which he pours, opens a slate and introduces me to Mick.

Undercover bike parking at the back!

Mick Flannagan’s a squat Leprechaun of a bloke with thinning white hair complemented by a shaped beard.

He’s in a pink T shirt with ‘Premium Grade’ across the chest, a well worn pair of cargo pants and some Blundstones, and he’s sitting at an old laminate table under the front window sucking on a XXXX stubby. Strong arms and gnarled fingers, he looks like a big bloke who’s been washed on the wrong cycle and has shrunk a couple of sizes in the hot drying sun but with character fully intact and undiminished.

Mick was two years old when my dad visited and he doesn’t remember the actual flood but he does remember the cost. He lived a bit downstream where his Irish father and Welsh mother had a dairy farming business and, apparently, a child breeding hobby. The flood wiped out every single one of their milking cows but they regrouped and were back at full pace within two years. The breeding was even less interrupted and eventually Mick had 11 brothers and sisters.

He liked cattle, liked how they looked and he liked how they tasted so he apprenticed as a butcher and ended up owning his own place in Kempsey.

“My butcher shop used to be next to the west Kempsey pub and it had my name on it, Mick Flannagan’s Butchery.  Well I sold that to my daughter who’s a real estate agent and so now her name is on the same place.”

Butchering taught him many things including the importance of sausages.

“Every profession has little tricks to make sure they make the most dollars. In butchers it’s the sausages. See, nothing in a butcher shop gets wasted, the skill is in the blending of all the stuff that you can’t sell straight.”

Mick got the blending of the inedible meat bits and just maybe a bit of sawdust just right and, “people would come up for their holidays and go home with 10 or 20 kilos of my sausages.”

And then he raised his stubby in its neoprene cooler and hit me with a real insight: “And in pubs, the sausages are the froth, that’s why I never drink draught, only stubbies. See in pubs the profit’s all in the froth. But there’s no froth in stubbies.

You pay for 330 mills and you get 330 mills, not 300 mills of beer and an inch of bubbles to top up the glass!”

Gordon looks over from the bar and laughs. He seems to laugh a lot at Mick’s stories.

In 1963 Mick went to his first rugby league Grand Final in Sydney. The same year he also had his first beer in the Willawarrin Hotel.

“The bar used to be in a different place and on the floor there was an ashtray around the bar’s base with a high lip to it that was designed as a foot-rail.  I was short, still am and now I don't care about it but back then I used to have to get up on the foot rail to make myself look taller so they’d serve me a beer. Not sure that I fooled them but I got served.”

He pulls himself up on the current brass foot rail to illustrate his point.

As Mick’s entertaining us Gordon’s partner arrives. The kitchen’s officially open here for dinner Wednesday to Saturday and for lunch Thursday to Sunday and since this is Monday, Karen’s fronted to cook up some tea – would a sirloin with chips and salad be okay?

About ten years ago driven by a growing dislike of Goulburn winters, Gordon and Karen bought a small farm about ten kms out of town. In mid 2107 over a beer out front of the pub, Gordon told the publican that if she was ever looking to sell, to let him know.

“She looked at me and said, ‘we have to talk’. Right there and then!”  After a six month delay during with the pub was stripped of more than a few things to pay a capital gains tax debt of the previous owner, the pub was theirs and the size of the task of breathing new life into the hotel became evident.

But it’s going well. The local community are coming back and news of the hospitality of the owners and the friendliness of the locals is spreading. The Sunday Pool comp has been restarted and it looks like the long standing Euchre games are about to crank up again.

And they’re working on becoming a destination pub for travellers.

“Without doubt the best guests we have are adventure riders, both groups and solo,” enthuses Gordon. “They spend days riding the fantastic roads around here and then we feed and water them. Can honestly say we’ve never had a single bad moment with people who rock up on bikes.”

And why would riders be anything else?  There’s eight rooms upstairs, 3 with queen doubles, 2 with standard doubles and 3 with twin singles. Each room is $40.00 for the night.

Rear view of hotel that shows the massive area to throw a swag or tent.

Out the back there’s a massive grassed area where you can throw a swag for 5 bucks including use of the bathrooms and toilets that are accessible 24/7.

The rooms open out onto the balcony but don't have screen doors so the skeetas can be an issue. There’s a well-equipped common room with microwave, toaster, jug and a full-sized fridge which doesn't have a freezer. There’s the usual stack of

white bread, spreads and cereal but if you’re with a group and want something heartier, Karen’ll come in and cook a full breakfast for your mob at just ten bucks a shot.

Bikes can be parked undercover in the spacious rear beer garden/verandah and behind a lockable gate.

Oh, and there’s also room 10. Upstairs next to the toilets is a room with a pair of single beds. This room is generally not available for booking.  Karen explains: “If we think someone’s had enough to drink and we cut them, we take their car keys and they stay for free up in Room 10. They get the keys back after breakfast in the morning when we’re sure they’re okay to drive.”

And it’s not just for your safety that they do this. As she’s telling me this, old Sheero chimes in with the story of Barry who chanced his arm one afternoon but got done for DUI on the way back from the pub with a case of beer. He knew he was busted and couldn't outrun the cops. He was on his ride-on mower!

Unlike so many pubs, this place doesn't sell bumper stickers advertising its existence. Instead, you can get a sticker for the town’s war memorial and every cent of your five bucks goes to the building fund.

So, in a town that gave so many men in the service of their country, we now have publicans who give two meat trays a week to local charity for raffles, who hand over the entire entry fees from the weekly pool completion to the local school, who push visitors to fork out to support the rebuilding of the village’s war memorial, who love having riders in their pub and who look after us when we’re there.

Why the hell wouldn't you go there?