Nothing but the Pub

   About ten years ago, not a day’s tramp from Ballarat, set well back from a dusty track that started nowhere in particular and had no destination worth mentioning, stood the Shamrock Hotel. It was a low, rambling, disjointed structure, and bore strong evidence of having been designed by an amateur artist in a moment of vinous frenzy. It reached out in several well-defined angles, and had a lean-to building stuck on here and there; numerous outhouses were dropped down about it promiscuously; its walls were propped up in places with logs, and its moss-covered shingle roof, bowed down with the weight of years and a great accumulation of stones, hoop-iron, jam-tins, broken glassware, and dried ’possum skins, bulged threateningly, on the verge of utter collapse. The Shamrock was built of sun-dried bricks, of an unhealthy, bilious tint. Its dirty, shattered windows were plugged in places with old hats and discarded female apparel, and draped with green blinds, many of which had ...

Here’s a story about a pub. Well, the remnants of what was once a pub. Actually change that to the remnants of a Wine Shanty In fact, best not to risk the ire of the probably pedantic ghost of its long time owner and give it the full regal moniker on which she insisted. Mrs Alexander, who ran the place between Holbrook and Jingellic for near half a century would promptly admonish anyone who within her earshot demeaned her house by referring to it as a ‘shanty’. Rather, it was the “Lankey’s Creek Wine Palace” and she would be ever so   thankful if it were referred to as such! She was a stickler for proper behaviour and courtesy was Barbara Isabelle Alexander, and she had no truck with any lack of respect or innuendo about her morals and class. One summer afternoon at the end of December 1919, this woman, who’s husband was absent, allegedly at the War, and who lived with her sister, had a visit from an old friend who was invited to stay for a cuppa...

After I got back from the bar with Rex Beaver’s second tumbler of water, at the Jingellic Hotel he told me about giving up the fags. “I used to love smoking but in ’82 I just gave it up one day and never thought about it again. I’ve got will power to do things like that. Like drinking.” Rex first gave up beer in 1974 and kept off it for nine years, “just because”. Then he went dry again in the ‘90’s when saving for his house and then he quit again in 2005 and has stayed with the soft stuff ever since. “ Make no mistake, I’ve loved every mouthful of beer I’ve ever had and the next one will be sweet,” but right now he’s doing just fine. I told him I was headed down-river to check out the ex-Dora Dora pub. “Aaaah,   had my first drink at that place.   I just went down there one Saturday and I decided it was time I had a drink so I went into the bar and old Alf Wright was there and he hadn’t met me before.   It was an ordinary 7 ounce beer and I t...