Nothing but the Pub

  It was robbery that brought me to this fascinating pub in the inner west of Sydney.  More specifically it was Robbery Under Arms (the book). And if I’m going to truthful it was more the book’s author, Thomas Alexander Brown –whose nom-de-plume was Rolf Boldrewood – who sparked the trip.  See, I’m researching our biggest and our more colourful fraudsters, pimps, bludgers, thieves, con-artists, liars and urgers and the pubs of their lives. And Brown - who later added a final ‘e’ because it sounded a tad more aristocratic and befitting of the magistrate whom he became – deserves his spot. If only for one of our great but little-known literary thefts.  Just briefly (because I’ll be doing a separate yarn on this) in 1894 Boldrewood asked an aspiring young writer, Louise Becke to send him some background info from his years of travels in the south Pacific. Then he asked for more details, for which he paid Becke a pittance and which Becke assumed were to be used to add ...

                    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 ...

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.        ...

Searching for Larrikins The Courthouse Hotel at Jamieson on the Upper Goulburn River, Vic.           “I shambled after (them) …. because the only people who interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn …..'             Three months after I first read and was inspired by this quote, and the rest of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”, I hitchhiked from Sydney to Perth and back in 11 days for a bet. I made it with a bit under 6 hours to spare.             It was 1964, vast stretches including all the Nullabor were unsealed.           And I was 13 years old.            In the almost exactly 47 years since (the trip was 11 days because that’s how long the June school ho...

  Lot of stitch-ups in the pub game. Some bloke wants to get rid of his pub, finds some mark who thinks he can run one – “hell, it’s a pub for gods sake, can’t be too hard” - juggles the books a bit, mentions sotto voce the thousands in cash that he’s been sliding off the slate, and, hold my beer, he’s got a buyer.   Who pretty soon finds out he’s been stitched up.  Often the new fella soldiers on, sometimes he just cuts his losses and disappears one night, and sometimes he, or she fights back. Torrens Creek’s Exchange hotel’s schooner glass of history carries just such an impurity where the stiffed buyer who got conned into purchasing it in 1938, took the vendor to the Supreme Court in Townsville and for 5 days fought his case.   The place is a tick over 150kms west of Charters Towers on the Flinders, and a bit less than 100kms east of Hughenden. (If anyone out there has anything good to say about Hughie, please let me know.)   Anyway, Tor...