The very Australian Hotel icon in sunny Gympie has reluctantly come to market as the passive owners head back to the Sunshine Coast.
The original Australian Hotel was built 1873 after a licence was granted to Mary Jane Catherwood, who already held two other licences in town.
After a string of ownerships, the pub mysteriously burned to the ground in 1917. The site and licence were bought by Mr J. Jerks, who also purchased the nearby Cricketer’s Arms Hotel, built 1884 by leading local architect Hugo Durietz.
Not long after, the Arms was removed and resurrected at its new site, as the new Australian Hotel.
The town of Gympie is on highway A1, around 170 kilometres north of Brisbane, and a traditional stop-over on route to Hervey Bay or Bundaberg. It is home to around 21,000 people and counts around a dozen pubs.
Considerable infrastructure and investment is taking place in the area, bringing recreation and aged care facilities, and commercial residential developments. Gympie is also home to the annual International Film Festival.
Earlier this year the freehold was purchased by a couple from the Sunshine Coast, an hour’s drive south, who planned to renovate, capitalising on his trade skills as a builder, and run it themselves.
In the past six months they have done the hard work, and spent circa $400k on restoration of the entire property, including new bathrooms and a new balcony for the 11 accommodation rooms.
The classically Queensland Australian offers a welcoming public bar, separate TAB and Keno area, separate gaming room with six EGMs, commercial kitchen and popular bistro seating 40-pax inside and 70 alfesco, plus a thriving drive-through bottleshop.
For several years now the Hotel has been run under management, with the private owners continuing this practise until they could take over.
But despite best-laid plans, they have now engaged CRE Brokers’ Craig Clark to manage a sale campaign.
“Due to family circumstances, the vendor has priced this hotel to sell quickly,” he says.
Reported annual revenue is circa $1.8m, coming predominantly from the bottleshop. The bistro contributes around a quarter of the turnover, ahead of bar, while the accommodation and gaming so far bring little to the table.
“The renovation’s only just been done, so somebody coming in can take advantage of that upside coming. He’s done a fabulous job on it. It presents really well.
“It’s a beautiful old Queenslander building up on the Hill there at Gympie.”
In 2014 the pub saw a valuation approaching $2 million.
The freehold going concern of the Australian Hotel is now being sold with view to a sale price of $995,000.
