Death by Dildo, Impersonations of the King, the Foundation of Lawn Bowls and the French Plan to Invade Sydney Cove: Welcome to the Woolpack Hotel at Parramatta.

  

The Woolpack at Parramatta

    So, a while back there was a stream of comments about ‘traditional pub grub’ and just what ‘traditional pub grub’ is and it got me thinking and, well, I’ve done little ever since but burrow down an astonishingly interesting rabbit hole of research on the history of Australian pub food. 

     This isn’t the resulting story – more a despatch from the front line - but it reveals once again why researching our unique pubs is so engrossing and rewarding. 

     It seemed to make sense to begin by finding out where and when the first pub meals were served in the Colony and it turned out they were probably served up by James Larra at his Freemason’s Arms on the intersection of George and Marsden streets at Parramatta, just down the road from where I grew up in Dundas. Almost my local. 

 The first mention of food at the pub was by an Irishman in 1800, but it was a Frenchman, François Péron two years later who really put Larra’s hotel and its viands on the map. 

 Larra’s pub was one of the first five hotels licensed in the colony in 1798 so I got to work digging into its history. It was originally situated on north west corner of the intersection but then moved diagonally across and a subsequent publican William Nash changed its name to The Woolpack. And that’s what and where it still is. 

 By the time a bloke named Nat Payten had taken over the Woolpack’s license in the 1860’s the regulars were getting a bit toey and started forming pub football, quoits and cricket teams to challenge the other pubs in Parra. 

 But the older fellas wanted in and a Scottish tailor named Alexander Johnstone, with business around the corner in' Church Street, outlined the principles of lawn bowls to host Payten, who jumped right on board, and dug-up his vegetable garden and replaced, it with a bowling green. 

 Seeing as no bowls were available at the time, Thomas Eades (or Eddes) a wood turner of Pennant Street, was given a description, of the required articles and he produced a set. The Woolpack Bowling Club was formed in 1870, the first one in NSW. 

 So a yarn starts coming together: first pub meal and first pub with its own bowling green but I figure I should see what I can find out about the publicans who’ve run the joint. 

And it turns out that James Larra, the bloke who started this historic pub, was married three times. First wife died, second wife died and the last wife ripped him off, made him bankrupt and became an actress (down at Barnett Levey’s Royal Hotel in George St in the city). 

But where it gets a bit more interesting is that James Larra was charged with the murder of his much younger second wife, Phoebe. Back then the Sydney Gazette, for almost a century published details of every single murder trial. Every single one. Except James Larra’s trial in 1804. It was considered so scandalous, so offensive to public sensibilities that not a single newspaper of the time touched it. 

The transcript of the trial is on Microfilm out at the NSW State Records facility at Kingswood west of Sydney so I head out there and find the reel. The records are images of the reports of the trial, hand written on both sides of very thin paper which causes the reverse side to be almost as visible (and similarly illegible) and the front. 

The official charge-sheet

It takes me four days to decipher and transcribe the full records which detail how James Larra was charged that he did “wilfully and with malice aforethought” on numerous occasions between March and August 1804 ‘thrust, force and push’ a ‘wax candle of no value’ into the ‘private parts’ of his wife, eventually causing her death. 

All the character witnesses testified that James and Phoebe were a loving, attentive couple and Larra was found not guilty in a trial which lasted less than a day. But his reputation was irretrievably tarnished and he lost many lucrative gigs and side hustles. 

The not-guilty verdict

Larra married for a third time, to a gold-digging wannabe actress who cheated and robbed him blind. His last mention in the press was an advertisement he wrote from his prison cell warning good people against having dealings with his spouse. Not a single newspaper recorded his death and he was buried in the Devonshire St cemetery which was later demolished to make way for Sydney’s Central Railway so even his grave was erased and the Woolpack pub is his only memorial. 

 So now I have the first pub meal, the first pub with its own bowling green and a scandalous and tragic set of tales about the founding publican. Definitely enough for a story but I chance upon a mention of Andrew “Bill” Nash, who was the next licensee, taking it over in 1821 so I chase him up. 

Turns out Nash also has enough for a story of his own and his meals at the Woolpack were legendary. But his most famous event was probably a farewell dinner for the retiring Governor Brisbane in 1825. “The Currency Crowd, the ‘true merinos’, proposed to give a dinner from which all emancipists were to be excluded. The Sydney Gazette slammed the exclusionary concept and when the Governor heard of the concept, intimated to his colleague, Judge Stephens that prominent colonists, including emancipists, should be invited. But the supporters of the original proposal refused the change, and they decided to abandon the function. 

 The emancipists – led by William Redfern, W.C. Wentworth and Simeon Lord - not to be outdone, decided to farewell Sir Thomas Brisbane at their own event …. at the "Woolpack". 

The function was a roaring success and the subsequent issue of the Gazette reported every word of every speech and toast (trust me there were a few) in a report number over 5,500 words ending with, ‘the Dinner was served up in Nash's usual elegant style'. 

 Nash made a packet from the pub and other businesses and figured a trip back ‘home’ might be in order, So he hosted a massive shindig – this time for himself - at the hotel and then headed down to Circular Quay. 

 When he got to London, he hired a team of eight white horses to pull his regal-looking carriage around town but “this attempt to imitate royalty created so much resentment that Nash was ordered to betake himself. and his outfit back to Australia.” He tried to ingratiate himself and procrastinate his exile by offering to buy England’s navy a warship but the scheme was turned down and “it was a more subdued Nash that stepped ashore on his return to Sydney”. 

 So that’s the publican side of things sorted, with stories on three of the most famous hosts to go with the colony’s first bowling green and first pub grub plus a famous meal, but it was that review of the early meal that brought me to the Woolpack so I decide to check out the French fella, François 

Péron a bit. Péron was a late minute addition as a junior zoologist to the scientific research expedition of Nicholas Baudin which set sail in October 1800 By the time the two ships of this mini fleet arrived in Port Jackson, through the death of several of his seniors and the desertion of the others, Péron was the senior (and only) zoologist on board. 

Baudin was apparently a right bastard and Péron and he clashed endlessly but they hung around the continent for over 3 years and Péron proved no slouch, logging over 100,000 specimens, many for the first time, and taking half a dozen kangaroos, some black swans and other live animals as presents for Napoleon’s squeeze, Josephine. 

 They all stayed at Larra’s hotel in 1802 and Péron’s review of the meals was glowing: “we were served with an elegance, and even a luxury ….. the best wines, such as Madeira, Port, Xeres, Cape, and Bourdeaux, always covered our tables; we were served on plate, and the decanters and glasses were of the purest flint; nor were the eatables inferior to the liquors. … Mr. Larra caused us to be served in the French style; and … amongst the convicts who acted as his domestics, was an excellent French cook.” 

But François Péron wasn’t just spending his days collecting flora and fauna and his evenings consuming exquisite food washed down with vintage wines. 

 At the completion of the expedition, Péron – who coined the term, ‘anthropology’ - wrote several reports on the flora and fauna of Terra Australis but he also wrote a very different report, entitled, “Mémoire sur les établissement anglais à la Nouvelle Hollande, à la Terre de Diemen et dans les archipels du grand océan Pacifique” 

In 1998 a fella named Roger Martin completed the first complete and comprehensive translation of this work and in it, Péron claims that “all our natural history researches, extolled with so much ostentation by the government, were merely a pretext’ for researching the best plan for a Napoleonic invasion of the colony. Péron details how the best course would be for three ships to sail into Broken Bay and up the Hawkesbury to Windsor, link up with disaffected Irish convicts and attack the colony from the west with a combined force of over a thousand. 

By 1814, having studied this plan which was hatched at least partly over some delicious pub grub at James Larra’s hotel, Napoleon had become convinced of the wisdom of invading Sydney and dispatched three naval boats loaded to the gills with marines and soldiers. 

Coulda been our leader!

All three vessels were destroyed in storms before they reached the Cape and all lives were lost and so the disgruntled Irish convicts – many of them veterans of the Battle of Vinegar Hill ten years earlier -continued their wretched lives. 

 But remember how I said it was an Irish bloke who first mentioned James Larra’s food in 1800? Well his name was Joseph Holt and he’d been a leader of the Irish Rebels in Wicklow in Ireland and fought in their Battle of Vinegar Hill back in 1798. After a few defeats he fled to the hills before negotiating his own surrender and transportation to Sydney Town. 

 He kept out of politics once he arrived (and wasn’t involved in the local Battle of Vinegar Hill in 1804) and served his time both in Sydney and Norfolk Island and then worked as William Cox’s overseer at Brush Farm. On 7th October, 1800 after watching the flogging of an Irish convict named Galvin, he and the Provost General walked to Parramatta and “went to a tavern, kept by James Larra, an honest Jew, where we dined upon a nice lamprey and some hung beef.” Nothing quite like meat after watching live human flesh being tenderized. 

 So, a single pub which is still trading and which served up the first documented pub meal in the colony; which had a publican who was charged with wilfully causing the murder of his beloved wife through use of a dildo; had another publican who got run out of England for impersonating the King; had a customer who’d led the armed resistance in the wilds of Ireland; and another who’s repaid the publican’s most praise-worthy meals and wines by plotting the overthrow of his country. 

 Should be able to get a story out of that!