Nothing but the Pub

  Rafferty's Race at the Royal  (From: The Sydney Mail, July 15th 1931) RAFFERTY had left his sheep just out behind the common, in charge of old Ned, a dog well known in the district. "Let um have a rest and a feed, Ned, old chap; I'll be back before sundown."        Rafferty made his way into the small town-ship only 2½ miles from where Ned stood guard. It was a hot day, and Rafferty's horse could be seen tied up under a shady pepper-tree right in front of the Royal. Rafferty was a queer old chap, and in his humble way he was a born naturalist. You never knew what Rafferty might un-earth from one of his torn coat pockets.         "Well, Rafferty," said the publican, "been catching any more of them specimens of yours lately?"            "Yes," said Rafferty, "I have. Just fill up that pot again, will you? I'm awful thirsty. I'll show you a thing I got only yesterday morning."   ...

 “Whosoever unlawfully and with violence or by any threat of violence  prevents any person from or obstructs him in working at or exercising,  his lawful trade or occupation, or beats or uses any violence or threat  of violence to any such person, with intent to prevent him, shall,  on conviction before two Justices, be liable to imprisonment  for a term not exceeding six months , or a fine not exceeding £20.”        The second time I was in Lockhart in this version of my life was in 2013 and I was on the trail of the Great Shearers’ strikes of the 1880’s and 90’s. Brookong Station, south west of the town on the Urana road was the place where Henry Baylis, the dour Scots Police Magistate from Wagga Wagga read this section of the Riot Act for the first time in the history of the colony.        I booked into the Commercial Hotel in the centre of town – a pub that’d caught my eye 3 years earlier - and then headed out to...

Listen up a bit, this is the story of a very decent pub.  I’m headed east from Tocumwal on the Murray and the rain catches me at Finley but by Corowa I’ve ridden through it and, dry but damn cold, begin heading north, hoping to camp under the bridge I know on Billabong Creek on the Urana Road. But at Walbundrie the pub’s open and the heavens are about to  so I pull in to thaw, drip dry and grab a warming glass of red.  Walbundrie and its pub used be known as Piney Range and this year it'll turn 170 years old.  Across the bar Adam and Lindy are dealing with the end-of-week mob and ‘of course it’s no problem’ to park Super Ten in under the cover of the veranda. I shed some layers and kick back. It’s humming, but not as busy as they’d expected – a  group of twelve had booked for lunch but not fronted (or cancelled) so, with Lindy and her offsider sister, Joanne, who’s come up to help out, handling the drinkers, Adam’s got time to talk and with no more riding t...

Dimboola's Victoria Hotel In an early scene of the Dimboola the movie, the visiting English writer asks the two blokes at the train station where he’s just arrived what Dimboola the town’s like.   “Ordinary,” replies one to which the other adds helpfully, “Dead ordinary”.   This place on the Western Highway, midway between Melbourne and Adelaide, was known to its ancestral owners, the Wotjobaluk, as “Watchegatcheca”, meaning “wattle trees and white cockatoos” but was given the name “Nine Creeks” when first surveyed by whites in 1862.        A few years later a new surveyor arrived in the Wimmera. J.G.W. Wilmot - likely a bastard offspring of an English baronet - had lived in what’s now Sri Lanka making coffee and money, and he arrived in Sydney by boat in 1852. Maybe because he was white, his boat wasn’t towed back into international waters and he ended up in Melbourne, and then Nine Creeks. He figured the place’s name was ordinary - probab...