“…yet it could tell a different story years ago. The teamsters, coming through from Narrabri to Walgett, would camp around here, and it was a common sight to see 12 teams resting; whilst the flames from the camp fires lit the darkness and the hobbled horses tinkled their way along the bank of the creek. Two local blacksmiths were kept busy. The road throbbed to the rhythm of galloping horses, the jingle of bit and bridle, the creak of well-worn saddles, and the buoyant laughter of bronzed bushmen, who came from all parts of the outback.
Nepean Times, 16 June 1934
The old hotel was a favourite rendezvous, where songs were sung, toasts were honoured, and where the board-walls shook to the gales of laughter that paid tribute to a tale well told. It is a quiet, easy-going place now, with the mail car and the telephone as the main links with the bustling world.”
The Comby Store operates as the local hotel today and is every bit as friendly. A large wooden bar dominates the spacious, corrugated iron building which is lined with photos of locals and other memorabilia of the area. The store is open most evenings after around 4pm, with a good selection of packaged drinks and snacks.
There’s a story they say in Coonamble that ‘the people at Come-By-Chance don’t talk to the people on the other side of the street…’ There is only one street in Come By Chance, and the only thing on the opposite side is the cemetery.
The little town took the imagination of Australia’s most famous poet, A. B (Banjo) Paterson who wrote:
Though we work and toil and hustle in our life of haste and bustle,
A. B. (Banjo) Paterson
All that makes our life worth living comes unstriven-for and free;
Man may weary and importune, but the fickle goddess fortune
deals him out his pain or pleasure, careless what his worth may be.
All the happy times entrancing, days of sport and nights of dancing,
Moonlit rides and stolen kisses, pouting lips and loving glance:
When you think of these be certain you have looked behind the curtain,
You have had the luck to linger just a while in ‘Come-by-Chance’.
The Comby Store is a Pub Stop along these Pub Routes. Discover more routes and pub history.
Pub Stories
Discover the history of The Come By Chance Hotel
Come By Chance Hotel
The Comby Store serves as the local hotel these days, but there was once a thriving hotel in the community on the black soil plains.