Nothing but the Pub

  So Anyhow*, probably no-one in the history of Australia melded a public career around script-written one-liners more than Paul Hogan.   He was painting the Harbour Bridge when an appearance on an alleged talent show in 1971 led to him getting his own gig on Channel 7 and then 9.   Then a mate of mine, Paul McKay at Hertz Walpole Advertising had the idea to have him front a campaign for a new brand of Rothmans cigarettes being targeted at arch rivals Phillip Morris’s market leading brand, Malboro.   The catch phrase was simply “Anyhow, have a Winfield” and it caught on like a struck Redhead in Mitchell Grass. Within months Rothmans were selling a million sticks of Winnies Red a day (at around 40 cents each!) and the Malboro Man (whose on-screen actor died of lung cancer) was in the shade.  Hoges was on his way. One of the early Winfield TV adverts featured the Sydney Symphony Orchestra which springs into action when Hogan turns to the cond...

The Union Hotel, Blackall On my Facebook Page A coupla blocks back from Shamrock St, the name the Landsborough Highway assumes as it rolls through Blackall, and suitably a bit west of the Black Stump monument, is the Union Hotel on the corner of Coronation Drive and May St. Just as the pubs on the main drag scream ‘Tourist”, this old double storey beauty drawls, “fair dinkum” so I park the bike out front, stretch out the joints and walk into the coolness.  Sarina, who runs the place with her husband is keeping a couple of locals and one of their dogs well satisfied and after grabbing a schooner of lite, I strike up with a bloke about my age whom I’ve not laid eyes on before at the bend in the bar. His square jaw strong eyes and granite face are sandwiched between a faded but not too filthy workshirt and an off-kilter wide beam and he’s the owner of the decent sized dog that’s just finished checking me out and licking the dead bugs from my riding boots. We exchan...

Echuca, The Star Hotel It’s just on ten in the morning and at the Star Hotel and there’s an expansive bloke running around like a blue arsed, carrying on half a dozen conversations at once, advising staff on special arrangements, taking calls on his mobile and shaking hands with some early starters.  His name’s Paul Jarman and he’s got ten minutes to spare,   “if we’re lucky’. Paul was ‘born into hospitality’, probably, I’m guess about 50 odd years ago.   His father ran the pub down in Rochester but in his twenties Paul headed overseas, working in Paris and London before coming back to Echuca at the turn of the century to raise his kids. A self-described, ‘river man’, he’s done the full length of the Murray in a tinny. It took him just over three years off and on and he managed a drink, he guesses in “98% of the pubs”. The trip convinced him of his connection to the river and the pubs convinced him of his desire to own one. In 2009 along wi...

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...