When the NSW state government announced it would build a railway line from Bungendore to Braidwood, it was a night of amazing celebration.
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Public houses gave out free beers, church bells rang out, and a volunteer brass band roamed the streets, or so the story goes.
So excited was the town, that one savvy proprietor P McGrath and established a Railway Hotel.
In reality, the site on the corner of Wallace and Solus streets had been a licensed venue since 1858. It was first licensed as the ‘Dog & Style’, under publican Peter Stewart, and later ‘The Pig and Whistle’.
I’ll often go and visit the site, and grab a stubby out of the esky, and sit down and celebrate the hotel that was there years ago.
- Scott Whitaker
Five year later, the town was disappointed as the government reneged.
The hotel traded for about five years as a ‘Railway Hotel’. However, without the trade a railway would have brought, it’s location south of the town’s centre meant it eventually went broke.
For a time it was a lemonade factory, then a guest house, before eventually being demolished.
Braidwood’s story is just one of many Scott Whitaker has encountered.
He has spent the past 10 years visiting every railway hotel in Australia.
Mr Whitaker’s grandfather had been an engine driver on railways in the Victorian era who encouraged both his sons to follow in his footsteps.
Neither did, so when Mr Whitaker came on the scene, his grandfather put every effort into converting his young grandson to his love of rail.
It was to no avail.
Instead, Mr Whitaker became an Air Traffic Controller for 30 years.
It was only when he was forced to retire after losing his hearing that his thoughts turned again to railways. It wasn’t the trains however that caught his interest.
Too young to retire, Mr Whitaker needed a project.
So, he set off to have a beer at every railway hotel in Australia.
His quest has taken him far and wide, literally. At this stage he thinks he has visited every hotel ever labelled ‘Railway’ in the country, apart from one or two in Western Australia.
At some, just the site exists, but to Mr Whitaker, this is no disappointment. He’s even made it his mission to track down the temporary drinking venues built near railway construction camps.
“I’ll often go and visit the site, and grab a stubby out of the esky, and sit down and celebrate the hotel that was there years ago,” he said.
And what began as a hobby, has now become his passion.
“It’s been an amazing journey around the country, visiting people and documenting bits and pieces of Australian history that up until now haven’t been told before,” Mr Whitaker said.
“People of today don’t understand how important the railways were back then. How it changed so many people's lives, especially in country towns.”
Initially, it was a project purely for his own personal satisfaction. However, his friends and family thought differently.
With each exciting tale Mr Whitaker returned with, they would tell him to write a book. So, Mr Whitaker did.
He has now published three volumes of history on Railway Hotels of Australia, encompassing Victoria, NSW and Queensland.