Nothing but the Pub

  It was robbery that brought me to this fascinating pub in the inner west of Sydney.  More specifically it was Robbery Under Arms (the book). And if I’m going to truthful it was more the book’s author, Thomas Alexander Brown –whose nom-de-plume was Rolf Boldrewood – who sparked the trip.  See, I’m researching our biggest and our more colourful fraudsters, pimps, bludgers, thieves, con-artists, liars and urgers and the pubs of their lives. And Brown - who later added a final ‘e’ because it sounded a tad more aristocratic and befitting of the magistrate whom he became – deserves his spot. If only for one of our great but little-known literary thefts.  Just briefly (because I’ll be doing a separate yarn on this) in 1894 Boldrewood asked an aspiring young writer, Louise Becke to send him some background info from his years of travels in the south Pacific. Then he asked for more details, for which he paid Becke a pittance and which Becke assumed were to be used to add some authenticating

                    Late on December 29th 1929 when a train pulled in to the station at the pub-less Mallee town of Patchewollock a car load of out-of-town plain-clothed narks was waiting in the shadows. They watched as a stack of crates of beer was unloaded from one of the railway wagons and when it was all done one of the D’s headed over and ‘chased’ the bloke in charge for 5 bottles of Melbourne Bitter and handed him a ten bob note.   Took the beers back to the car, and then returned with his civvied mates, busted Thomas Holland for sly grog selling and confiscated the town’s delivery of 1070 bottles of beer and 19 bottles of wine. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you too!   A decade later even the local cops had changed their tune and admitted that sly-grogging was an out of control social menace and that the workers of the area deserved personal irrigation as much as did their crops. The local walloper testified to a hearing that there’d been 11 prosecutions in his 4½ yea