The Four Mile Hotel was a short-lived licensed premises located on the travelling stock route between Bourke and Louth in the late 1870s. As the name suggests, the pub was about four miles from the town, but not to be confused with a later “Four Mile Hotel” on the road east to Brewarrina.
The licensee James Nathan Taylor was among the very early free selectors to take up land in the district, and had holdings near Louth before moving closer to Bourke.
Unfortunately very little information can be uncovered about this short-lived watering hole. The first licence for the Four Mile Hotel was granted to James Nathan Taylor on 1 December 1876, but he does not appear to have continued in the hotel business for very long .
Just six months prior to applying for a licence, Taylor is described as being a sheep owner from ‘Ballycastle’, near Louth, travelling with a mob of 4000 sheep for sale in Bourke. And in July 1876 he had sold ‘Ballycastle’ for a sum of £2,000, the property to be added to the vast Toorale Run owned then by Sir Samuel Wilson.
“The free selector is settling among us”, hailed the Bourke correspondent of the Australian Town and Country Journal in August 1876. “Mr Taylor has taken possession of 680 acres on the Jandra Run (to the southwest of Bourke) and others are doing the same on Beemery.”
In June 1878, Mr Taylor’s hotel is mentioned as providing a welcome refuge for an unfortunate stockman from Jandra Station, who was thrown from his horse about six miles from the hotel. His mare had stumbled in soft ground and fell, rolling over its rider, snapping his leg near in two. After crawling for a quarter mile, the stockman somehow managed to grab hold of his horse’s reins and get back into the saddle and ride to the Four Mile Hotel. Despite the attentions of Dr Brown from Bourke, the man’s leg had to be amputated.
Sometime around 1879, Taylor’s properties near Bourke were acquired by Bourke publican and keen sportsman Charley Warren of the Turf Hotel, who sold them again in 1880.