The Nindigully Hotel - where the burgers are almost mythical and the history is.

 

There's no doubt that the signature burgers and steak sandwiches at the Nindigully Pub are of near mythical proportions, but maybe, just maybe the claim that this is the oldest continually licensed hotel in Queensland is a far more undiluted myth.

 Whether or not the Nindigully Pub deserves this title doesn’t affect the quality of the current pub – I’ll leave that to another time. But their longevity claim's been getting argued on a FaceBook page I follow i and so I went for a dig, and this is what I know at the moment. 

As ever I stand to be corrected, in fact I love being presented with new - primary not secondary source - evidence showing I’m wrong or in the dark about some details. 

 I totally accept that the hotel at Nindigully has been known as the Nindigully Hotel, The Traveller's Rest, The Sportsman's Arms , the Grand Hotel and (seemingly in error), the Queenslander (in 1922) and that all these names refer to a single hotel. Such name changes are irrelevant to the claim of longevity but, as we’ll see shortly, they do raise a slight issue. 

 Beginning in 1859 the Queensland Government published a regular Gazette detailing Govt Acts, decisions, tenders etc, and licenses including publican licenses. On page 662 of the consolidated Gazette of 1864, the granting of a new license to Thomas Bradford for a hotel in the St George Region to be known as the Nindigully Hotel was noted. So this date is not in dispute. 

 The problem is, however, no mention of the Nindigully Hotel, or any other hotel in Nindigully, appears in the annual list of licensed hotels in the Government Gazette for the next ten years. It would seem that Bradford retained the building for the accommodation of his own family and some rooms for travelers but operated it without providing liquor (or indeed maybe supplying it without a license). 

 In July 1876 a well-maker (borer) died after being glassed at ‘Gardiner’s Nindy Gully or Nindigully public house', and adverts for the pub so-named appeared in the press in both 1877 and 78. Then in 1878, the Balonne Advertiser ran an advertisement for the Travellers Rest Hotel, Nindigully, on the Moonie River 20 miles from St. George. 

 I have a secondary source which states: “One of the few amenities at Nindigully was the Sportsman’s Arms, licensed to William Reynolds from 1880, then to William Mitchell until 1888 when James Halligan took it over; he ran it until 1890.” 

 From 1901 to 1906 the Government Gazette listed Elizabeth Woolich as the licensee of the Travellers Rest in the area of St. George, but it also notes that John Sparkes took over the license of the Sportsman’s Arms from R.J. Campbell in 1902 and held it for just two years. There’s never been a claim that Nindi had two pubs – no argument that the Travellers Rest and the Sportsmans Arms ever existed side-by-side on the bank of the Moonie. The explanation is that it’s almost certain that at some time after 1890 the hotel at Nindigully changed its name from Travellers Rest to Sportsman's Arms and that a hotel named “Travellers Rest” opened in the town proper of St George. 

 Times must’ve been tough at Nindigully because in 1903, just the year after Sparkes had taken over the pub, the St George newspaper noted that: “at the Licensing Court … ‘an application was made by John Sparkes for the cancellation of the license for the Sportsman’s Arms Hotel at Nindigully, on the St. George – Mungindi road (and) was .. granted.” 

 The paper went on to lament that, “this will be a great loss to the travelling public, as there will be no place of accommodation between St. George and Dareel and St. George and Tallwood.” 

 So it seems to be beyond dispute that for a period beginning 1904 or 1905, Nindigully had no licensed hotel. 

 Eight years after Sparkes closed his hotel, the railway line was extended from Goondiwindi to Bullamon and so momentous was this development viewed by the residents of the area that they successfully petitioned for their town to be renamed Thallon after the Commissioner for Railways. Grabbing an opportunity to exploit what he anticipated would be the new traffic on road to the rail head, A.W. Nixon “purchased a business site (at Nindigully) and started to erect an hotel on it.” 

 “But”, as the local paper noted in April 1911, “before the completion of the building it was bought by Mrs M. A. Haines, who this week opened the new premises to business.” This new hotel, recently erected, was “an edifying structure containing 17 rooms, and (was) beautifully furnished throughout.” Haines named the new hotel, The Grand. 

 In 1935 “Dry Ink” wrote a reminiscence in the Balonne Beacon on the “Bush Hotels of Long Ago” and correctly claimed that “the Nindigully Hotel on the Moonie was existent in 1864 when it was kept by Thos, Bradford” and he went on to correctly name some of the early licensees. Given his accuracy in these details, there is no reason to dismiss his further claim that “of course, (Bradford’s original hotel) was not on the same site as the present Nindigully Hotel."  

So, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, I’m convinced that the original Nindigully Hotel was built in 1864 but that the current Hotel was built in 1911 to service road traffic to the rail-head at Thallon. For the previous approximately 8 years there had been no hotel at Nindigully and so the claims that it has continually had a license since 1864 are fabrications. 

 At this stage it might be interesting to note that one of the arguments proponents of Nindi being older than the Breakfast Creek which was founded in 1863 is that there is a period of around a decade for which there is no mention of it. “Pot and kettle”, I hear you cry. 

 Likewise, any claims that the current pub is on the same site, or includes any portions of the original hotel would seem to be false. 

 Doesn’t mean it’s a bad pub. Just means that it’s been fibbing about its age and is over half a century more youthful than it claims to be. 

 As I say, any evidence, or preferably primary source proof, that a license existed for a hotel at Nindigully for the periods, would be gratefully received.