Enngonia Hotel

The place where Bride struck the Warrego became known as “Con’s Hut” and it is supposedly that rough shack from which the village of Enngonia derives its name. The story goes that Bride, a proud Irishman, named his humble dwelling “Erin’s Gunya”, which later morphed into Eringunya, Eringonia and then finally the post office cleared up the matter by declaring the village name Enngonia.

But Bride is more infamously remembered for his leading role in the murder of Aboriginal people in what became known as the Hospital Creek Massacre.

In 1866, William Shearer opened up a small bark hut hotel half-a-mile up the Warrego from Con’s Hut at what is now the northwest corner of Belalie and McCabe Streets.

Shearer named his public house the Warrego Inn, but it was almost exclusively referred to at the time as “Shearer’s Inn”.

Shearer held the licence just a few short years, but they were certainly eventful ones.

The isolated country along the Warrego had very quickly become a refuge for bushrangers and horse thieves and in 1868, Shearer’s Warrego Inn was the site of the first violent incident of bushranging on the Warrego. On 6 October 1868 Senior Constable John McCabe and Constable Hugh McManus of the Queensland Police arrived in Enngonia hot on the trail of bushrangers Charles Rutherford and Frank Pearson, who also used the alias “Captain Starlight”.

The two police officers had ordered breakfast at Shearer’s Inn when Rutherford bounded into the bar, revolver in hand crying “Bail Up!”. A desperate gun fight followed in which McCabe was shot in the chest and died several days later. Pearson was shot twice in the right arm during the affray, and was later captured on Mount Gundabooka by Sergeant Cleary of Bourke. 

Not long after this incident, Shearer moved his family over the border to Eulo where he continued to run a hotel.

Robert Kerrigan was the next to take over the liquor trade at Enngonia. He had been one of the early stockmen to make a home on the Warrego some years earlier. Kerrigan too, had his run-ins with bushrangers. In 1878, police confronted the bushranger “Midnight” outside Kerrigan’s Inn. “Midnight”, one of the aliases used by Thomas Law, was wanted for the murder of Police Sergeant Wallings near Dubbo. Pursuing officers had tracked him to Kerrigan’s Inn which they approached under cover of darkness, only to hear the sounds of Law’s horse’s hooves as he galloped away. They fired after him but Midnight escaped.

Tracking him for two days through the bush, the pursuing police surprised Midnight while he slept. In the affray that followed, Midnight was mortally wounded and died the following morning at Wapweelah Station at Irrara Creek, where you can find his grave today.

When police asked his name, he is said to have responded, “My right name I will never tell. I have lived like a dog and like a dog I’ll die.” In his pocket, police found a handkerchief with the name Jane Mills.

Eringunia/Eringonia/Enngonia Hotel

The second hotel licence to be granted in Enngonia was to Christopher Millar in 1874 for the “Eringunia Hotel” which was located on the southwestern corner of Belalie and Shearer Streets.

Millar is recorded as holding the license for just one year and it seems that Kerrigan took over the spacious new hotel, abandoning the original inn built by Shearer around 1875.

The Enngonia Hotel (as it was finally spelled) continued to trade until 1905, when it was destroyed in a disastrous fire along with the stables and a nearby private dwelling.

Post Office Hotel

The first hotel to appear at the site of the current Oasis Hotel, confusingly also appears to have originally borne the name Eringonia Hotel. From 1879 to 1883, both Hugh Nawn and John Anthony held licences in that name, one was registered in Brewarrina and one in Bourke.

Hugh Nawn was ‘mine host’ at the new hotel and became the the village postmaster. His Eringonia Hotel was renamed the Post Office Hotel in 1883.

After the Enngonia Hotel burned down in 1905, the Post Office Hotel remained the village’s sole watering hole until it too met a fiery end in 1963. Two men were charged with arson over the incident.

The rebuilt ‘Oasis Hotel’ opened to the public just in time for race week in October 1965.

Royal Hotel

After transferring the licence of the original Eringonia Hotel to John Anthony around 1880, Kerrigan appears to have briefly opened up another public house, the ‘Royal Hotel’. Little is known about it, but the hotel appears on an 1885 map just to the south of the Eringonia Hotel, where the current school now stands. 

Today