The Local

22/10/2026

AUSTRALIA’S 99 HIDDEN GEM PUBS
#97: HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

#97: Penneshaw Hotel, Kangaroo Island SA

Nearly everyone who visits Kangaroo Island lands right here. They roll off the ferry at Penneshaw, put the foot down and head for the koalas and the sea lions.

Most never stop. They should.

Penneshaw is a village of 269 people. In 1803 French explorer Nicolas Baudin sailed in here. One of his crew carved a record into a rock on the beach, and pigs set loose by the French gave the place its first name. It’s still called Hog Bay.

In 1903 the Penneshaw Hotel opened above the bay. Locals call it the Penny. For more than 120 years it’s looked out over Backstairs Passage to the mainland.

Next time you’re on the island, don’t race off the ferry. Pull up at the Penny, grab a cold one and watch the boat you just got off head back across the water.

YOUR TURN.
Which pub does everyone drive straight past that deserves a stop? Nominate it in the comments and tag the pub. The best make the countdown.

Share this with anyone heading to KI this summer.

96 to go.

22/10/2026

21/10/2026

AUSTRALIA’S 99 HIDDEN GEM PUBS
#98: THE PUB WITH RADIOACTIVE WATER

UPDATE: We got this one wrong. The Radio Springs Hotel closed its doors in January 2025. Thanks to Raymond, a former regular, for setting us straight. But the story is too good not to tell, so here it is properly.

#98: Radio Springs Hotel, Lyonville VIC

In 1928 an Irishman named Mickey O’Sullivan built a pub in Lyonville, a timber village in the Wombat Forest between Daylesford and Trentham.

He had a selling point nobody else had. The local spring water was said to be radioactive, thanks to high levels of radon gas. A century ago that was a good thing. Mickey promoted it as a cure for indigestion, anaemia and lung complaints, and as a general pick-me-up. Around Hepburn, springs were advertised as “guaranteed radioactive”, and Lyonville’s water was thought to be the strongest of the lot.

At one stage the pub was even owned by radio and TV legend Ernie Sigley.

Then it went quiet and sat idle. In 1997 Ken Parfrey and Jackie Airey bought it to live in. The locals kept asking for a pub, so they spent 11 years restoring it and threw the doors open on Good Friday 2009.

They ran it for 16 years. On 26 January 2025 they called last drinks.

Lyonville, a village of fewer than 200 people, hasn’t had a pub since.

One regular reckons the spring was first called the Radioactive Springs, and the name got quietly shortened after the Second World War. Can anyone confirm it?

The pub closes, the town dies. Unless someone brings it back.

YOUR TURN.
Did you ever drink at the Radio Springs? Share a memory below. And if you know the real story of the name, we want it.

Share this far and wide. Somebody out there might be the one to reopen it.

97 to go.

21/10/2026

When Wellington’s Federal Hotel opened in 1894, Australia didn’t actually exist as a country yet.

The six colonies were still separate, but the push for Federation was gathering pace. The new Wellington pub took its name from the cause, with FEDERAL HOTEL proudly written across the top of the building.

It would be another seven years before the colonies finally joined together and the Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901.

The Federal has been pouring b**rs in Wellington ever since. More than 130 years after the name went up, it’s still trading today.

20/10/2026

AUSTRALIA’S 99 BEST HIDDEN GEM PUBS
#99: THE PUB THE HIGHWAY FORGOT

We’re counting down the 99 best hidden gem pubs in the country. Off the main road. Down the back way. The ones you only find if someone tells you. We start today.

#99: Carcoar Royal Hotel, Carcoar NSW

Carcoar was gazetted in 1839, the third town west of the Blue Mountains. By 1850 it was second only to Bathurst. Then the highway bypassed it and time stood still. Today the whole village is National Trust classified, with Georgian and Victorian streetscapes, convict-built stables from 1849 and a grand old courthouse, tucked in a valley on the Belubula River.

In 1863, bushrangers Johnny Gilbert and John O’Meally tried Australia’s first daylight bank robbery on the same street. A teller fired a pistol into the ceiling and they bolted empty-handed.

There’s been a Royal on this spot since 1849. The first was knocked down in the 1920s, the second burned down in 1941. While it was rebuilt, the town reopened the old Stoke Hotel so Carcoar wouldn’t go dry. Third time lucky.

Turn off the highway. Park the bike out front. Cold b**r, good feed, balcony rooms if one becomes a few. Every rider in these photos knew it.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN.
Nominate your favourite hidden gem in the comments and tag the pub. The best make the countdown.

Share this so the Royal gets the visitors it deserves, and so your mates don’t miss #98.

98 to go.

20/10/2026

THE PUB BUILT BY A DURACK
The name Durack is usually associated with huge cattle stations in the north of WA, but the family also had strong ties to Wagin.

Paddy B. Durack had a large sheep property called Behn Ord just east of town, and in 1905 he had the Palace Hotel built.

And it was quite a pub. Two storeys, big verandahs wrapping around the building and that distinctive tower on the corner.

The Durack connection to Wagin continued through Behn Ord, where the family bred Merino sheep. Paddy’s daughter Elizabeth Durack would later become one of Australia’s best-known artists.

The Palace is still a pub today, more than 120 years after Paddy Durack built it.

19/10/2026

PUB FROM THE PAST: BIRMINGHAM ARMS HOTEL

Long before you could drive from Hobart to Launceston in a couple of hours, this was one of the places you stopped along the way. The Birmingham Arms sat just south of Oatlands on the old main road.

Back in the stagecoach days, coaches would pull in here and the tired horses could be swapped for fresh ones before heading off on the next leg.

The old stone pub dates from the 1860s and quite a bit of the original setup is still there, including the stone stables, storeroom and dairy. The big two-storey verandah came later, around the turn of the century.

These days even the road has moved on. The old pub now sits beside a closed section of what was once the main Hobart to Launceston road.

18/10/2026

THE PUB THAT HELPED START AUSTRALIA’S CRAFT B**R REVOLUTION

Back in 1984, most pubs in WA were tied to the big breweries and sold their b**rs. A group of blokes in Fremantle decided to do something different. They bought the old Freemasons’ Hotel opposite the Fremantle Markets, restored it and put a small brewery inside.

It became the Sail & Anchor and was Australia’s first pub brewery. They started making their own b**r on site, and the little operation eventually became Matilda Bay Brewing Company.

The pub itself is even older. The current building was constructed between 1901 and 1903, replacing an earlier hotel that had been on the site since the 1850s.

More than 40 years after they started brewing b**r out the back, the Sail & Anchor is still there in Fremantle today. And craft b**r certainly caught on.

17/10/2026

THE PUB THAT CAME BACK FROM THE BRINK

The Imperial Hotel in York was in pretty bad shape by the early 1980s. It had been damaged in the 1968 Meckering earthquake, its big two-storey verandah had been removed and the old building continued to deteriorate.

By 1981 it was declared unfit for human habitation and closed. Hard to believe looking at it now. It sat empty, copped more damage from vandals and the weather, but thankfully nobody knocked it down.

The old Imperial was eventually restored, including rebuilding that verandah. After another major restoration, it reopened as a pub again in 2018.

Not bad for a building that was basically written off more than 40 years ago.

16/10/2026

PUB FROM THE PAST: THE DAWSON HOTEL

There’s not much left of Dawson anymore. The little South Australian town was laid out in 1881, with big plans for a new farming community north of Peterborough. And for a while, it worked.

More than 100 people lived there, with stores, churches, a school, blacksmith and, from 1883, the Dawson Hotel.

But Dawson was built north of Goyder’s Line, where rainfall was always going to make farming tough. Then the railway bypassed the town. People started leaving and eventually most of Dawson disappeared. The pub lasted longer than just about everything else. It kept trading until 1961.

Today there’s no roof, no bar and no cold b**r. Just the old stone walls of the Dawson Hotel sitting out in the paddock. A pretty impressive reminder of a town that almost completely disappeared.