The first pub : Tallimba

 Tallimba

 


The Tallimba pub was, and is, an interesting one, and I have been able to draw on the substantial Tooth and Company records held in the Noel Butlin Archives Centre at the Australian National University in compiling the story of our lives in it, and indeed in the other hotels in which we lived. In the years my parents held hotel licences, the primary liquor licences for hotels were held by the big breweries – Tooths, Tooheys – and the only beer that could be sold at those hotels was that made by the company the publican obtained a licence through. And, fortunately for me, many of the Tooth records are detailed indeed.

 My recollection of the “Tallimba Inn Hotel” is of a new-ish building. And so it was. A single story brick structure, built in 1940 by Mr W.S. Thomas, who held onto the ownership for many years, including when we lived there. The photo above is from the current Facebook page for the hotel, and the only difference from our time there is the covered front verandah.

It wasn’t the first hotel building in Tallimba, a small rural community of a few hundred people about 30 km west of the bigger town of West Wyalong. The original hotel, variously named the “Tallimba Hotel” or the “Royal Hotel”, was a wooden building which had been relocated from the town of Yalgogrin in April 1923. At 1am on 16 January 1939, a fire resulted in the total destruction of this building. Suspicions were immediately aroused about the nature of this fire. The building had been described as “in a very dilapidated state”, and an enquiry into the fire returned an open verdict. This didn’t entirely satisfy the Coroner who was heard to remark that he had no doubt this was “another case of arson”. A contentious insurance claim was settled for £3700, less than the £5000 sought. Apparently this was achieved with “much argument”, there being “strong personalities involved”.

 The new hotel was originally planned for the same location, near to the railway line and the wheat silos. However it was built about 500 metres away, in the main street, where the few other shops and businesses were. A better site in some ways, but in a more flood-prone area in heavy rain. In fact the building suffered serious damage from floods in January 1943 – in that flat terrain, there was just nowhere for a heavy downpour to quickly drain away. A 1944 Architect’s report called for substantial repairs, outside flood mitigation works, and replacing the “hopeless fencing”, at an estimated cost of £450. I recall the flood channels still there when we were in residence, and decent fences!!

 Just before we arrived, another case of “strong personalities” had played out, involving the then licensee Mrs Richards, and her employee Mrs Hatley, from Barellan. Mrs Hatley had injured her left hand at work, resulting in 3 weeks in hospital in West Wyalong, followed by an operation in a Sydney hospital to join the tendons in that hand. Mrs Hatley takes up the story : “Told that I may have to have an amputation, Mrs Richards refused to compensate me and I had to put the case in the hands of my Solicitors, Morgan and Olliffe, of Griffith. The Solicitor wrote asking what she  intended to do regarding compensation, and Mrs Richards replied “nothing” “. In September 1951, Tooths wrote to Mrs Hatley “we are sorry indeed that we are unable to be of assistant (sic) to you on this occasion”. No-one, it seems, had, or was willing to divulge, details of where Mrs Richards was now living. It’s an interesting comment on several aspects of life in the 1950’s!!  Perhaps it will not surprise that when I visited the hotel sometime in the last dozen years, I noticed that it is now a “bikies pub”, a gathering spot for one of the Sydney gangs on their trips out west.

 Mrs Williams was replaced as licensee by a Mr Swanson, previously an “Engineer Lieutenant” in the Royal Australian Navy and enjoying his first stint running a hotel. His newness to the task is hinted at none too subtly in the records with the note that “as yet he does not know the previous licensee was selling casks on the black market to get rid of beer”. Nevertheless “he is a good type and should do credit to the trade in general”. For whatever reason, Mr Swanson cut short the normal licence period of 3 years, and in October 1952, the Cleary family arrived.

 While the archives don’t indicate the number of bedrooms or other rooms, they do say “there is a cold room and electric light; no septic tank. The business is a profitable one as it is in area no. 6”.  I certainly recall the lack of a septic tank. The toilet was an outside building, a wooden structure placed over a rectangular hole in the ground, dimensions probably 2-3 metres long wide and deep. I was terrified every time I had to sit on it for a “number 2” and there must be some deep psychological scars lurking somewhere, awaiting a therapist. After a heavy rain event, a cow in the paddock behind the hotel wandered too close to the boundary fence, the earth gave way, and the cow fell into the sodden toilet pit. The loudly complaining animal was lifted out of the morass by means of a rope around its neck and towed by a tractor. I suspect it did not survive the ordeal. It is lodged indelibly in my memory that this was “the policeman’s cow”.

 Helen was born on 24 January 1953, that date being also the same birthday as mum’s. The birth was in West Wyalong hospital, which was largely unchanged in 1984 when my own daughter Stephanie was born there……. I remember being home when mum arrived with the new baby, right in the middle of summer. What a difficult time this must have been, with just fans to move the hot air around. Also living with us at that time were our Sandford relatives : mum’s sister Phyl, her husband Jack, and their children Barry and David. Barry reminds me that they were there for some time, with his dad working in the bar and Barry attending the local school. My guess is that they came to help out when mum was looking after the new baby, and it must have somehow fitted in with Jack Sandford’s own work, or between-jobs time.

 For school children, living in the “Western Zone” meant an extra week's school holiday, and I began Year 1 (called 1st Class in those days) at Tallimba Public School. Barry would probably have been in 2nd Class, but in any case in the same classroom with me and same teacher.  The countryside was dotted with small 1 teacher schools at that time, and consequently the Tallimba School was itself a small one. It was at most a 2 teacher school, but may well have been just a single room and 1 teacher. There weren’t a lot of kids in the playground, which had a metal climbing frame and a few truck tyres as play equipment. A visit one day by a very large goanna – “giant”, in my memory – kept us inside looking out, and very wary next play time around the truck tyres. Did we have homework in those days? Reading books to take home?  I don’t remember any homework through my entire primary education, but it was also, of course, a far more restricted curriculum which was easily covered in normal school time. The Department of Education provided for all Government Schools a reading magazine, differentiated for the various class levels, and this was the source of our wider reading. In fact, it was a very useful publication, introducing us to a variety of literary genres and Australian authors.

I remember clearly the excitement of waiting for dad to arrive home with our new car : an FJ Holden, straight from the dealership in West Wyalong. It was a light blue, numberplate AHV 920. Why on earth I remember that, I have no idea, but clearly its advent into our lives was significant!! Holdens were the pride of the nascent Australian manufacturing industry, cars “built for Australian conditions”. As many major Australian roads were gravel, our car would test this contention for years to come. I don’t remember it ever breaking down, boiling over, or in any way not performing as required. It stayed with us for the next  9 or 10 years, as far as Nowra, but no further.

 I can only remember once having to hold a white enamel tray onto which was loaded the offal from a sheep being slaughtered in one of the hotel garages. The poor animal had been kept in the dark there for a day or two to calm it down – or so the theory went – and then it had its throat cut and was butchered on site. Surely there was a “professional” butcher employed for this grisly task? I dimly recall a few men present and cousin Barry, and I can only assume I was a conscript to the occasion – unless my sensitivities were less developed then than now. My clear recollection of the occasion would suggest the impact it had, but I manfully stuck to my job. Offal would have included brain, stomach and intestines, heart, kidneys and liver – perhaps a clue to my life-long avoidance of these delicacies. Even steak and kidney pie is a bridge too far.


A hot, very hot, summer is of course the norm for the west, and I misjudged the heat the day I went barefoot to the Baker’s shop for a loaf of bread. Badly blistered feet resulted and I was probably lucky the degree of burn wasn’t worse. Getting around barefoot is a common recollection of childhood and it must mean we had tougher feet as a result?

The photo is of the old bakery, now derelict. No such thing as cement path and sealed roadway in the years I'm describing!

Another accompaniment to life in the west can be grasshopper plaques, and mouse plagues for that matter. I did live through a mouse plague years later in the 1980’s when we were living in West Wyalong, and that was unpleasant enough. But the grasshopper plaque sometime in 1953 was extraordinary. You could see this dark black cloud approaching, and then suddenly it was pitch black, total darkness as all light and the sun was blotted out. I stayed in my bedroom, dealing with the plentiful intruders who managed to get through shut doors, and amazed – and somewhat terrified – at the pounding on the roof. It could have been a hailstorm, for the racket it made. The cloud passed over quickly enough, but the aftermath lasted days as grasshoppers emerged from cupboards, beds, the kitchen, bathroom…….everywhere. I have never had any problem fully understanding the biblical injunction of Moses sending a locust plague on the Egyptians in his entreaties to free the Israelites from slavery. And that was without understanding the real problem with a locust / grasshopper plague – the enormous damage to crops. When we were facing an emerging locust plague at Canowindra around 2013-14, I was very quick to act!!

 On 27 January 1954, dad renewed the lease on the “Tallimba Inn” for another 3 year period. The lease rental remained at £12/week, it being noted that “JF Cleary was up to date”. As well as the weekly lease, an amount of £2250 was payable in 3 yearly instalments for “goodwill”, and a further amount of £1650 also payable in 3 yearly instalments as a “lease bonus”. However, the ink on this contract was no sooner dry than everything changed. A handwritten note on 2 February 1954, by Mr WS Thomas, the hotel owner, says that “Cleary has sold Tallimba”, due to being “incapacitated” (underlined). Could this have been a flare-up of dad’s war injuries, malaria and badly damaged knee? I suspect this is more likely the case, as this makes more sense of that word “incapacitated”. The incapacitation that would follow from excessive drinking was still some years away. In any event, the lease was transferred to a Darcy Leo Johnson on 5 February, with the files noting that Mr Johnson was an ex-shearer and the “first impression was not good”.

 Whatever Mr Johnson’s qualities or otherwise as a prospective publican, he was able to pay the full price of £3525 of sale of the lease to JF Cleary, and an additional amount of £1583, being the value placed on the furniture. An interesting development to say the least!! Seems a bit strange that within one week of signing a new lease, both an “incapacitation”  would occur and a new lessee found. The files are silent on anything that could throw more light on this.

 

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