Read’s Hotel had three bedrooms and two sitting rooms and, as one visitor in 1871 noted, a supply of very good butter made by burying three pints of cream underground.
Read doesn’t appear to have stayed long in the hotel business however, as at the start of 1873, John Handock was granted a new licence for the Mount Oxley Hotel. Whether this is the same premises or not isn’t clear, as Handock had taken up land just four miles away from Read’s selection.
In 1875, the hotel was in the hands of James Read’s son-in-law, Henry Johnson, who made the following announcement in The Central Australian and Bourke Telegraph, 2 August 1875.
The Mount Oxley Hotel
“Henry Johnson begs to inform the Public that having taken the above Hotel he is prepared to afford the best accommodation. Only liquors of the best brands are kept in stock. Travellers will find this an excellent stopping place and will be afforded every convenience. The Hotel being situated in country completely fenced in and an abundant supply of water being on the premises, affords advantages not usually to be had from wayside Inns. Cobb and Co’s Coach passes by twice a week.”
Standards may have slipped after Johnson relinquished the business just a few years later, but one traveller writing in 1880 most certainly failed to find those “advantages not usually to be had from wayside Inns” that he had boasted about.
“This haven of rest might by some people be considered even superior to Pink Hills Hotel. Neither is likely ever to be imitated by any licensed victualler near Sydney who wishes to do a good business, either for architecture or cleanliness or good accommodation for travellers. But I dare say many a hotel in Sydney does a worse business than either, for when a customer does honour one of those roadside inns, he, if a “gentleman” shearer, shepherd, or stockman, knocks down his cheque as such.
“The black-bottle business is their mainstay; it is not what the customer eats, but what he drinks and pays for, or pays for and does not drink, that gets the publican his living. My private opinion is, that keeping a brisk public is not the road to Heaven.”
The last Mount Oxley publican was Patrick Weldon, who moved his family into Bourke in 1882 and opened the Bushman’s Arms in Glen Street.