by Haynes, Jim
And he drank the health of Kangaroobie Riley!
‘Where’s the money?’ asked the publican; ‘you’ll have to pay, begad!’
‘Gave the brandy for the beer!’ said Dad the wily,
‘And I handed you the whisky when I took the brandy, lad!’
‘But you paid not for the whisky!’ answered Riley. ‘No,’ said Dad,
‘And you don’t expect a man to pay for what he never had!’
—’Twas the logic flattened Kangaroobie Riley!
‘See,’ said Kangaroobie Riley, ‘you have had me, that is clear!
But I never mind a joke,’ he added dryly.
‘Just you work it on O’Gorman, and I’ll shout another beer.’
‘I’d be happy to oblige yer,’ said McGinnis with a leer,
‘But the fact about the matter is—O’Gorman sent me here!—
So, good morning, Mr Kangaroobie Riley!’
THE OLDEST PUB IN AUSTRALIA
You might think that finding the oldest pub in Australia would be a simple enough thing. Think again! It’s a minefield of different criteria. Do you mean the oldest building? The oldest licence? The oldest pub name? Or, maybe, the oldest continuously trading establishment? We are only talking about licensed pubs here. There may well be older pubs that began trading without a licence and then obtained one at a later date.
The oldest licence still trading belongs to the Woolpack in Parramatta, which began trading in April 1796. This pub has changed its name several times, however, and at one stage moved across the road into a different building.
The oldest continuously trading pub in New South Wales is the Surveyor General in Berrima, which received a licence in 1834, but the pub in the oldest building is the Macquarie Arms at Windsor. The building which houses this hotel was built in May 1815 after Governor Macquarie, in 1811, had given Richard Fitzgerald a ‘large allotment in the square on the expressed condition of his building immediately thereon a handsome commodious inn of brick or stone and to be at least two stories high’.
Naturally, the owner was delighted at the vice-regal patronage and called the pub the Macquarie Arms. Not long after the pub began trading in May 1815, the Governor graced the hotel with his presence and the Sydney Gazette reported:
That spacious and commodious new Inn at Windsor, called The Macquarie Arms, was opened by the GOVERNOR, on Wednesday the 26th instant, when HIS EXCELLENCY entertained at dinner the Magistrates and other principal Gentlemen residing at Windsor, and in that neighbourhood. Mr. Ransom, who has taken on himself the duties of Innkeeper, is, from his experience in the avocation, thoroughly competent to the undertaking, which we are convinced will be conducted on a liberal footing. Its necessity has long been manifest as there was no house of public reception at Windsor capable of accommodating large and genteel companies, whereas the Macquarie Arms from its extent, plan of building, and adequate number of apartments will be doubtless found worthy of the most liberal patronage and support.
The licence of the Macquarie Arms has not, however, been continuous as the pub ceased trading for long periods of the building’s history.
The Macquarie Arms often claims to be the oldest pub ‘on the mainland’ because the oldest continually licensed hotel operating on the same site and in the same building in Australia is actually the Bush Inn in New Norfolk, Tasmania, which operates in a building as old as the Macquarie Arms, being also constructed in 1815. The licence was granted to this pub on 29 September 1825.
New Norfolk was so named because it was the place to which the residents of Norfolk Island were taken when the island was closed as a penal settlement in 1814. Until then the island settlement had operated in conjunction with the one at Sydney. The island was to lie abandoned until 1825 when another convict settlement was begun there.
Apparently the relocated residents of Norfolk Island drank illegally in their new home from 1814 until the local pub was granted a licence in 1825.
JH
MULLIGAN’S SHANTY
W.T. GOODGE
Things is just the same as ever,
On the outer Never-Never,
And you look to find the stock of liquor scanty,
But we found things worse than ord’nry,
In fact, a bit extraord’nry,
When meself and Bill the Pinker struck his shanty.
‘Shanty?’ says you, ‘what shanty?’
‘Why, Mulligan’s shanty.’
I says, ‘Whisky’; Bill says ‘Brandy’;
But there wasn’t either handy,
For the boss was out of liquor in that line.
‘We’ll try a rum,’ says Billy.
‘Got no rum,’ he answers chilly,
‘But I’d recommend a decent drop o’ tine.’
‘Tine?’ says Bill, ‘what tine?’
‘Why, turpentine!’
‘Blow me blue!’ says Bill the Pinker,
‘Can’t you give us a deep-sinker?
Ain’t yer got a cask o’ beer behind the screen?’
Bill was getting pretty cranky,
But there wasn’t any swanky.
Says the landlord, ‘Why not try a drop o’ sene?’
‘Sene?’ says Bill, ‘what sene?’
‘Why, kerosene!’
Well, we wouldn’t spend a tanner,
But the boss’s pleasant manner
All our cursing couldn’t easily demolish.
Says he, ‘Strike me perpendic’lar
But you beggars are partic’lar.
Why, the squatter’s in the parlour drinking polish.’
‘Polish?’ says Bill, ‘what polish?’
‘Why, furniture polish!’
THE OLDEST PUB IN SYDNEY?
Now, which is the oldest pub in Sydney really is a matter for conjecture or, rather, a matter for making up your own set of criteria and then putting in a claim!
The Lord Nelson in Kent Street is a heavyweight contender. On 29 June 1831, Richard Phillips obtained a liquor licence for the Shipwright Arms on the north-east corner of Kent and Argyle streets. The next year, because of the support of the seafarers and the workers on Observatory Hill, he changed the name to The Sailor’s Return.
In 1838, Phillips sold the pub to a plasterer, William Wells, who lived on the opposite corner in a two storey colonial home he’d built in 1836 using sandstone blocks quarried from the area at the base of Observatory Hill. Wells continued to operate the pub opposite his home firstly as The Sailors Return, and in 1840 as The Quarryman’s Arms.
In 1841, he sold the pub and, on 1 May 1841, he obtained a liquor licence for his home, which he then called the Lord Nelson.
The hotel has now been restored with the aid of an 1852 photograph and is often cited as Sydney’s oldest pub, although the licence was not only transferred, it was also not, perhaps, the original licence granted on which the pub now operates. To make things even more confusing, the licence was also restored or renewed, or lapsed and was re-granted at some other point in the pub’s history.
Confused? Don’t worry, just go and have a drink there, the Lord Nelson is a beaut pub!
The Fortunes of War in George Street was licensed in 1828 and the 1830 certificate of the licence renewal is still on the wall. The pub you visit on the site may well be the oldest continuously licensed public hotel in Sydney, but it is not the original building. The current pub was built in 1922 in art nouveau style after a fire destroyed the original.
The Hero of Waterloo in Lower Fort Street can lay claim to being the oldest continuously operating pub in the same building in Sydney.
The Hero was built by convict labour in 1843 for stonemason George Paton and was licensed in 1845. If you look at the walls you can still see the gouges in the rock from when they were heaved out of the ground so long ago. If you look really hard, you can see that the gouges are a consistent pattern on particular stones, but vary from stone to stone. That’s because each convict had to meet a certain quota of stones, and the particular cu
t on the stone allowed the convict to identify his stones at the end of the day.
The best thing about the Hero, probably because of the stone, is that it is still in the same basic condition it was in 155 years ago. While most so-called ‘old pubs’ only have a piece or two of the original old pub left in them, the Hero is the real thing. It was a favourite with the various ‘Red Coat’ regiments of the British army that were posted to Sydney throughout the nineteenth century.
There is a delightful irony in the fact that the Hero is now called an Irish pub, and employs many Irish staff. Although it was the soldiers sent to keep order, rather than the freed convicts, who frequented this pub after transportation ceased in 1840, there is still some tenuous historic connection between the pub’s name and its current Irishness. After all—one third of the convicts sent here were Irish, and the British soldiers sent to keep them in order needed a drink!
JH
A CURIOUS REMINISCENCE
ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY
Of all the bloomin’ awful things, the awfullest I’ve knowed
In the five-and-sixty years I’ve bin alive,
Took place at Paddy Doolan’s on the old Jerilda road,
Way back in sixty-four or sixty-five.
Old Doolan was a handy man, a useful sort of chap,
But a real, right-down tiger for his rum;
And one day, being tipsy, why he tumbles from a trap,
An’ cracks his skull, an’ goes to kingdom come.
Well, they sends an’ tells the trooper, an’ the trooper rides across,
‘An’,’ says he, ‘I’ll have to let the “Crowner” hear;’
So they stretches out old Jerry in the place he used to doss,
A tumbledown old shanty at the rear.
I was trampin’ down from Bulga and had just run out of grub;
Rainin’ too, till every rag on me was soaked;
So, you bet, I wasn’t sorry to pull up at Doolan’s pub
On the evenin’ of the day that Jerry croaked.
Well, I’d had me bite o’ tucker and a glass or two o’ beer
And was sitting’ there a-fillin’ of me pipe,
When in comes Mad McCarthy and Long Jim from Bundaleer,
An’ my word! But they was well upon the swipe.
Two strappin’ big six-footers an’ as strong as bullocks, both;
An’ ripe for any devilment as well;
The man that interfered with them, you might just take your oath,
Stood a pretty lively chance o’ catchin’ hell.
Well, they dank an’ laughed an’ shouted, an’ they swaggered an’ they swore,
Till McCarthy took a notion in his head
That they’d make old Jerry drunker than he’d ever been before;
‘Yez can’t do that,’ says Doolan, ‘Jerry’s dead!’
‘Dead drunk, you mean!’ says Jimmy. ‘No,’ says Doolan, ‘no, begob!
He’s as dead as he can be, without a lie!
For he tumbled out of Thompson’s trap, right fair upon his nob.’
Says McCarthy, ‘Come, old man, that’s all my eye!’
‘Bedad,’ says Pat, ‘then take a light an’ go yerselves to see,
Sure he’s lyin’ in the shed forninst the gate.’
So the fellers get a candle an’ they tips a wink to me,
An’ out they goes to see if it were straight.
Well, sir, back they comes directly an’ a laughin’ fit to split,
An’ behind them Mother Doolan cryin’, ‘Shame!’
An’ well she might, for there, between the pair of ’em, was it,
The clay that used to answer Jerry’s name!
With its head a-hangin’ forward, and its legs a-draggin’ loose,
You can bet it was a dreadful sight to see!
An’ I started up to stop ’em, but says Doolan, ‘What’s the use?
They could smash a dozen chaps like you an’ me.’
So they humped their fearsome burden to a corner o’ the bar,
An’ they propped it on a cask agin the wall;
‘What will Jerry drink?’ says Jimmy, an’ McCarthy says, ‘Three Star!
For we won’t be mean with Jerry, damn it all!’
Well, sir, Doolan fills three nobblers an’ McCarthy collars one,
An’ slaps it down before the senseless clay;
Then they bobs their heads to Jerry, an’ they says, ‘Old man, here’s fun!’
An’ they punishes their liquors right away.
Then ’twas, ‘Fill ’em up again, Pat, fill ’em right up to the brim!’
Till they’d swallered half a dozen drinks a head.
Then McCarthy stares at Jerry’s glass, an’ then he stares at Jim,
‘By the Lord!’ he says, ‘Old Jerry must be dead!
‘For it’s five-an’-twenty minutes he has had his poison there,
An’ he’s never tried to touch a bloomin’ drop!
So you’re right for once, old Doolan! Have a drink an’ let us square,
For it’s nearly getting’ time for us to hop.’
So they humped poor Jerry back again to where he was before,
Mother Doolan still a-scoldin’ them in vain;
Then they staggers to their horses that was standin’ at the door,
An’ they gallops off like madmen through the rain.
THE ENTERPRISE OF PETER DEGRAVES
While you cannot, perhaps, give a clear and definitive answer to the question, ‘What’s our oldest pub?’, there is no such doubt about the oldest brewery in Australia. The oldest brewery is the famous Cascade Brewery in South Hobart.
There is nothing contentious or doubtful about Cascade’s claim to being the oldest brewery in Australia.
A true pedant might argue that it hasn’t been in Tasmania all that time—as Tasmania was known as Van Diemen’s Land until 1856 when the name was changed in an attempt to rid the colony of all traces of its horrific past history.
An amazing character, Englishman Peter Degraves, received permission to build the brewery in 1824 but, as we will see, the brewery wasn’t established until 1831.
Peter Degraves was born in 1778 into a well-respected family of French descent, in Dover. His father was a doctor and Peter studied engineering. He was a risk-taker who was imprisoned for theft and was bankrupt for several years before deciding to emigrate to Van Diemen’s Land in 1821 with his family and his brother-in-law and business partner Major Hugh McIntosh.
They purchased a ship called the Hope and raised money for the venture by selling passages to migrants.
Degraves was arrested for overcrowding the ship and then imprisoned for debt, but finally arrived in Hobart with his wife and eight children in 1824. He and McIntosh were granted land at the Cascades in 1824 and started a sawmilling business as well as providing water to Hobart from a dam they built.
In 1826, his creditors in Britain renewed charges against Degraves and he was imprisoned and faced bankruptcy again when a British judge decided the discharge of the previous debt was not valid in law.
Degraves was in custody until 1831 when Governor Arthur had him released. While in Hobart Prison, he designed new plans for remodelling it.
The court took the sawmill and his house, but after Degraves’ release he and McIntosh soon started a second sawmill, a flour-mill and several bake houses, as well as the brewery, which they completed in 1832.
It was reputed that the beer, timber, flour, bread and biscuits they produced brought in about £100,000 a year.
Water rights for the brewery were a problem and, when the government built a dam above Degraves’ water source in the 1840s, he attempted to sue the Public Works Department. When the editor of the Hobart Town Guardian criticised him, Degraves threatened him and was prosecuted and briefly imprisoned again in 1848.
He eventually lost his battle over water rights.
After McIntosh died in 1835, Degraves started a shipbuilding business and built m
any large ships, including the barque Tasman, the largest ship built in Van Diemen’s Land at the time, at 563 tons.
In 1834, he formed a syndicate that designed and built the Theatre Royal in Hobart, renowned as the best theatre in Australia. After a disagreement with the other syndicate members, Degraves became the sole proprietor in 1841.
When the gold rush began in Victoria, he loaded his ships with timber, which was used to build thousands of houses in the rapidly growing town of Melbourne.
Degraves died at Hobart on 31 December 1852.
The Theatre Royal still stands today, almost as it was built, the oldest theatre in Australia, and famous Cascade beer, ‘from the clear waters of Tasmania’, is still just about the best drop you can drink!
JH
HOW AUSSIE IS FOSTER’S?
In the 1970s and 1980s, you may well have heard the phrase ‘as Aussie as Foster’s lager’ in Britain and the USA especially, where Foster’s was marketed as the beer Australians made and loved to drink. The slogan for Foster’s was ‘It’s Australian for beer’.
Well, it may have been marketed as ‘Australian for beer’, but what is the answer to the question ‘How Aussie is Foster’s?’
If you take the nationality of the founders of Foster’s famous beer into account, it’s not Australian at all—it’s American!
The Foster brothers, William and Ralph, arrived in Melbourne in 1887 and they were not primarily interested in beer or brewing. They were pioneers in the refrigeration industry and they arrived with the latest in refrigeration equipment.
They set up their brewery and, in 1888, successfully brewed the very first local lager-style beer in Australia, a beer that needed to be kept cold to be enjoyed properly.
Having done what they had planned to do, Ralph and William promptly sold their entire operation to some locals in 1889 and went back to the USA. No one seems to know what the two enterprising Americans did after that.
In 1908, there was a massive amalgamation of breweries in Melbourne. Carlton, McCracken’s City, Castlemaine, Shamrock and Foster’s breweries all combined to form Carlton United. The Foster’s brewery in Rokeby Street was closed and the Foster’s name was almost lost. Carlton United only continued to brew a beer branded as Foster’s because there was some demand for the label in Queensland and Western Australia.
