Nothing but the Pub

When I get to The Homebush Hotel at Penarie, there’s no bugger about except a suss looking bloke having a durrie on the front porch. This, folks, is Nugget, boss of the joint and he watches me get off Super Ten then disappears inside. By the time I’m at doorway he’s sorted a glass of water and is asking me what I’d like to chase it with. I grab a Furphy, confident it’ll not be my last for the night. Nuggett’s into his second year here after turning his back on the ‘smoke’ “ I was managing pubs and clubs in Cairns and when I finished with the them I decided to get a real job and headed to Brisbane and stayed with Telstra for 18 years and paid off a house in Hamilton and then bought the blue van. Then I headed down to Wodonga to spend some time with mum and dad who live down there. Then I got a call from an old mate who had a pub he needed someone to look after at Corowa so I’d drive from Wodonga to Corowa each day and I did that for about 8 months and then ...

“In mid-1997 we were living in a little cottage at my workshop and Mandy, my wife, came home one day and said, “Booroorban’s for sale” and I said, “good, leave it where it is.” And she said, “no, I’m jumping in the car and having a look at it, are you coming?” But I told her I’d seen it enough so she came up here and had a look at it.” It’s a quiet Sunday arvo as Roger, almost immobile with a bung hip relaxes out front of the Booroorban Pub and tells me how he and his wife ended up here, because it was the delicensed slumbering shell of the old Royal Mail Hotel at Booroorban that she’d come to see. Months earlier the Packers had sent a posse out into the bush. “They started out around Albury and cleaned out a whole lot of licences and they spread the word around that they were going to use the gaming and liquor licences for the Olympics. They weren’t at all interested in the buildings, just the licences.” Roger thought at the time it was strange business: “I was...