The legendary ‘Pub With No Beer’, Lees Hotel in Ingham, is being sold as a freehold going concern – serving beer – looking to a sale price of $3.3 million.
The north Queensland landmark was built 1875 as the Day Dawn Hotel. It has long laid claim to being the original ‘Pub With No Beer’ made famous by Slim Dusty.
Inspiration for the song, first written as the poem A Pub without Beer by cane-cutter Dan Sheahan in the Day Dawn Hotel in 1943, was reportedly in response to the legend wherein a group of American soldiers had just drank the pub dry.
The poem was transformed into the song “A Pub with No Beer” by Gordon Parsons, and released by Slim Dusty in 1957.
In 1960 the original building was demolished, and Lees Hotel constructed. It now stands replete with a statue of Sheahan on a horse on top of the pub, and a bulk of memorabilia and images inside.
However, a cross-border battle with the Taylors Arm Hotel in NSW has continued for years, over who can really claim to being the true site of the inspiration for the tale.
Late 2017 previous owner Charles Ryman listed the business, and in early 2019 Lisa and Glenn Connell crossed the country, coming from WA to take over the iconic heritage-listed pub.
Last year Ken Dark and business partner Shane Punton bought the freehold, but experiencing ‘changed circumstances’ they have teamed up with the tenants to offer up the freehold going concern – the first time this has happened in nearly five decades.
Lees Hotel is being marketed by JLL Hotels’ Mark Walsh and Tom Gleeson.
