First licensed in 1880 to George Warren, the hotel was later renamed the Carrington and it carried on trading until the mid-1890s. When it burnt down in 1899, the newspapers noted that it had been untenanted for some time.
Horse racing was conducted on a track next to the hotel and may well have been the main reason for the pub’s existence as Eccles was a keen and active sportsman who owned a number of champion racehorses throughout his life.
Eccles had been born in Sydney, but came to Bourke and was working for local teamsters as a youth. He is said to have been a good bushman and may even have helped peg out the Bourke to Cobar Road in the early 1870s. As a young man he carted a load of grog from Bourke out to what is now Thargomindah and built the very first hotel. In fact he could be said to have founded the town as his was the very first building and a street in the town still bears his name.
In 1879 he briefly held the licence at Ned Warmoll’s Turf Hotel in Bourke and later set up a butchers and carrying business with James Maxwell.
The Western Australian gold rush of the 1890s lured Eccles to take his family to Coolgardie where he held the Great Western Hotel and appears to have made his fortune, much of which he invested in race horses.
In 1898, he moved to Perth and took on the Grand Hotel and was a popular and well-liked figure in the local sporting scene. Alfred Eccles died on December 7 1900 after a long illness, but the paddock where the Four Mile Hotel stood was still known “Eccles’ Paddock” long after his death.
Painting by By F Woodhouse 1897. Laverty collection, Sydney.