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...

                    Late on December 29th 1929 when a train pulled in to the station at the pub-less Mallee town of Patchewollock a car load of out-of-town plain-clothed narks was waiting in the shadows. They watched as a stack of crates of beer was unloaded from one of the railway wagons and when it was all done one of the D’s headed over and ‘chased’ the bloke in charge for 5 bottles of Melbourne Bitter and handed him a ten bob note.   Took the beers back to the car, and then returned with his civvied mates, busted Thomas Holland for sly grog selling and confiscated the town’s delivery of 1070 bottles of beer and 19 bottles of wine. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you too!   A decade later even the local cops had changed their tune and admitted that sly-grogging was an out of control social menace and that the workers of the area deserved personal irrigation as much as did their crops. The local ...