A research puzzle to drive you to drink!

Jonathan Roe

OC Life readers would know that I am quite fond of chasing historical stories and have found myself lost in the wonderful and ever-growing archive of old newspapers, photographs and records being made available online through the National Library of Australia’s Trove site and other public institutions.

Whether you are an academic researcher, journalist, or dabble in family history, it is truly wonderful the scale of the information available at your fingertips.

Well, during my after-work hours of late I have been fortunate to have been part of a team involved in a project that really tickled my fancy and allowed me to dive deep into the archives. 

The brief for the project was to create a tourism travel promotion for the Bourke, Cobar and Walgett Shire Councils based on the idea of ‘historic hotels’. The object was to increase visitation to the three local government areas, with the hook being to give a glimpse of the history of the regions through stories of old pubs and publicans.

It was on the research side that I came into the picture. The first step was to identify all the existing pubs and all the pubs that used to be. It seemed a straight forward task, but the scale of it all surprised us. Trawling through government gazettes, newspapers, and local histories, we discovered some 200 “signs of the house” across those three local government areas! And they were just licensed hotels and does not include the numerous illegal ‘grog shanties’, wine saloons, oyster bars and other venues where one could find ‘refreshment.’

Now, not all were in existence at the same time, and many hotels went by more than one name over their lifetimes, but unravelling all that was far from easy. There were multiple occurrences of hotels bearing the same name in the same town at the same time, hotels burning down and reopening next door, or the same publican being the licensee of numerous hotels over their working lives.

Licensing district boundaries also changed over the years, and there were even times when two hotels on the same street in one township were somehow in different licensing districts.

Locating just where all these hotels were was also a massive challenge, especially for the old bush pubs, where there is rarely more than a well-picked-over bottle pile to indicate anything was ever there at all. Old hotel licence notices and newspapers never include anything really useful, like street addresses or longitude/latitude, it’s usually something like “Location: Barwon River” or “opposite Mr Colless’ store”. Thankfully, we had access to the work of local historical societies, which was very helpful, although that was not always to be relied upon. It took a combination of pouring over old maps, delving into land deeds, deduction from photographs, satellite and aerial images, and on-the-ground searching to find them all. (As an aside, I think the most interesting resource was all the old riverboat pilot maps that have been made available through the State Library of NSW and others. These hand-drawn maps on rolls of calico were used by the paddleboat captains and rock reefs, river channels, the best places for wood, station houses, shearing sheds, and also pubs. They are truly remarkable items!)

Next was to collate the basic details of the hotel’s history, which was never simple. Even the well-documented hotels had huge gaps in available information, one small piece of the puzzle needed to make a clear picture. And for some, there was little more than the “Sign of the House” and the name of the licensee. Still, there was always some interesting tidbit or yarn to find, and often the more difficult searches led to better and more surprising stories. There were publicans who made huge fortunes, and plenty more that lost them. Tales of resilience in the face of trying times — droughts, floods, the boom-and-bust of the mining districts. Truly tragic stories and plenty of humourous ones too.

These are now there for you all to discover on The Pub Route, a collection of eight loop trails exploring the Bourke, Cobar and Walgett Shires. On each trail, not only will you discover a little of the history of the west through the stories of the old roadside inns, but also the vibrant towns, villages and quirky bush pubs that remain the heart of community life in the bush today.

The Pub Route will be officially launched in March 2025, but you can take a peek right now by visiting www.thepubroute.com.au