Nothing but the Pub

 “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...

Excerpted and adapted from my book Drinking in the Rivers Vol 1: the Pubs and People of the Murray and Edward Rivers. Available from: Nothing but the Pub One of Australia’s first high-profile divorces was very messy.  It involved the usual allegations of mental cruelty but, sensationally, it also centred on charges by one party of several instances of inappropriate behaviour by the other with a camel. In fact, more than one camel. And the first alleged occurrence of this shameful behaviour with said camels, was at the river at Wakool across the road from where the Kyalite Pub now stands.  The Royal Society which was backing the 1860 expedition decided that camels were needed and that they required expert care. They appointed George Landells to the expedition on higher pay than the leader. Which was probably a wrong move. These two had just met and apparently things went fine until Burke tried to load-up the camels to a degree that mahout Landells objected and as the group h...

  Mulga Creek Hotel Byrock NSW To purchase my latest book on the Pubs of the Murray and Edward Rivers click on: nothingbutthepub.com                So anyway there’s no mine, no diggings, without their mullock piles and noodling for good pubs is no different – clichéd themed oh-so-cute and quaint joints with transient staff and oblivious management with zero-care factors about the organic entity of which they are briefly a part, are the inevitable slag piles of fossicking for the gems of the outback hotel landscape.             But for every slag pile, every mullock heap, unless it’s a blue duck, there’re gems – precious places like, well ….. like the Mulga Creek Hotel at Byrock. I’ve dropped in here three times and every time it’s been wet. Today’s no exception and there’re puddles out the front in the empty parking area.            Henry Lawson graced Byrock i...

  The Wellshot Hotel Ilfracombe Qld           In 1954 the boss of the Qld A.W.U. was interviewed about the roots of unionism in the Sunshine state:  “The Labor Movement in Queensland as we know it-…., was born in the pastoral … In 1886, at Wellshot station … industrial trouble arose at shearing time because shearers would not accept the … slave-like conditions of work proposed (and) went on strike, and the news of their action went like a bushfire throughout the outback (and) when no settlement was reached at Wellshot the men began to march on Blackall (where, with shearers from other gangs and stations) they decided to form the Shearers' Union.”            Eventually this Shearers’ Union grew into the backbone of the organization which became the ALP in Barcaldine in 1892. The place of Wellshot Station and Ilfracombe in our political and social history were cemented forever.        ...

So anyway, as an oxymoron, somewhere up there at the top of the tree along with ‘humourous German’,   ‘military intelligence’ ‘stable political leadership’, ‘cheap 10,000km service’, ‘pristine motorcycle workshop’, ‘quiet Harley Davidson’ (and ‘quiet Harley Davidson owner’), must be ‘Victorian Outback’. I mean the state doesn't even have a quarter million square kms. It’s less than a third of NSW,   about a quarter of SA,   just over and eighth of Qld and less than a tenth of WA. It’s the most densely populated state in the country and you can ride from its north west corner to its south east tip in a comfortable 11 hours. So when a joint pushes itself as Victoria’s ‘most outback pub’, they’re either endowed with either a massive sense of relativity or a huge dose of humour and irony. And when the hotel’s on a short detour from one of the less interesting stretches of road along the Murray, (one I’ve ridden too many times) I figure the cost/benefit ri...

There’s something about the outback. You either ‘get’ it. Or you don’t. The outback either touches your soul, or it doesn’t. You connect with it, and, like artesian water, flow beneath its surface, feeding off it and returning the richness it gives you or you skim over it, oblivious to its rich and endlessly changing character. As you ride, the change from mulga to box, from turpentine to wilga, from gidgee to cypress to brigalow will enthral you or it’ll all just be ‘trees’. The earth’ll glide from brown to grey to black to red, from sand to clay to iron stone or it’ll all just be dirt. The changes will either transfix you or they’ll be unseen, unheard, untasted, unfelt and unknown.   ‘Getting’ the outback is about your soul not your senses. It’s about your core in tune with the country’s heart. In the 1880’s one of the more erudite transients, the Hon (no less!) Harold Finch-Hatton published his, “ Advance Australia! – An Account of 8 Years’ ...