Furthering the folklore that was The Pub the Whole Pub and Nothing But the Pub, intrepid advocate of the mighty watering hole Colin Whelan has now released the picturesque Drinking in The Rivers.
Whelan began his affair with Australia’s wide open spaces at the age of 13, when he hitchhiked from Sydney to Perth and back in 11 days to settle a bet. Turning 18, he entered his journey of pub culture under Frank Hardy and Jim Buckley at Jim’s Newcastle Hotel, in Sydney’s The Rocks.
In 2003 Whelan set off Adelaide, riding a new motorbike he’d bought back to Sydney, and lamenting the lack of patrons in small town hotels found himself setting the goal of only staying at pubs that were for sale, which proved too easy to find.
“When I got back, I thought ‘this is just rubbish’,” he recalls.
“These are all good places, run by good people, and the cities are full of other good people with good money looking for a good time.”
He secured a column in a motorcycle magazine on his ‘Pub of the Month’. Approaching two decades later, it’s still going.
In August 2017 Whelan released his first book – Pub Yarns: the Pub the Whole Pub and Nothing but the Pub.
It sold out before Christmas. A re-print also sold out, in two months.
“The best feedback I get is from publicans who tell me when I rock up to a pub I’ve written about that they get regular travellers coming in wanting them to sign ‘their’ page in the book because they’re on a mission to visit every one.”
Certainly not short of material, Whelan has now produced his second book – the first in a trilogy of the pubs along the river arteries of Australia.
The hard-cover coffee table book offers nearly 350 pages of captivating stories and exquisite pictures of the pubs and people that have made Australia proud.
“I write to make people restless,” he adds. “Not necessarily to visit the pubs I’ve featured, but ANY pub – to chuck the stuff in the car and head out to the bush, to a place that you’ll long remember.”
PubTIC is proud to offer Drinking In The Rivers at a 10% discount for our readers: $44.95 + GST and postage.
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EXTRACT – from Chapter 24: Only Victorian pub north of the Murray
James Maloney obviously reacted to an advert in the Riverland newspapers in May 1871 calling the attention of ‘Men of small Capital in quest of a Safe Investment’ to the availability to buy or let the Barmah Hotel ‘replete with every convenience for carrying on a profitable trade.’
Two months later the Shire of Echuca posted its annual valuation notice for properties within its confines and amongst the listings was a ‘hotel, Barmah’ in the name of ‘Maloney, James’.
Something may’ve happened with the licence because in 1874 he applied for a full licence for a house containing nine rooms and, ‘to be known by the sign of the Bamah (sic) Hotel’.
He was now a fully-fledged member of the savvies, who controlled a crucial transport corridor and the adjacent accommodation for travellers and their stock. But the Barmah Punt, and the adjacent pub were unlike every other pub and punt along the entire stretch of the Murray, which forms the boundary between the Mother State and Australia Felix. One thing stood them apart from every other Murray River pub and Murray river punt.
Like the others the Barmah punt crossed the river north-south and the pub was adjacent the approach. But the difference was that the southern end of the punt was in New South Wales and the northern point was in Victoria. The Barmah Hotel was, and still is, the only Victorian pub where you can have a glass and then head south for a dip in the Murray. It is the only Victorian pub on the north bank of the Murray.
