While earliest settlement of the Walgett District appears to have commenced in the 1840s, it was not until 1859 that Walgett was gazetted as a town and the first lots were sold. During the 1860s and 70s the town was to grow, and along with the commercial undertakings came hotels.
The first hotel in Walgett was the Warrena and those in the district were the Bungle Gully and Moraby Inn. Readers will notice many variations of names and spelling, but they appear here as they were printed. Town hotels will appear first and as far as is possible they will be in chronological order.
Hotels were a fundamental element of the community, preceding almost all other commercial activities. Hoath’s business, which started the town’s commercial life, was both a store and hotel. Other hotels were added over the years, some in the towns, but many were set up along the tracks frequented by drovers as they moved livestock through the area.
By 1 July 1898, the inns and hotels within the Walgett Licensing District included the Australian Arms, Royal Hotel, and the Commercial Hotel at Walgett. The Royal Hotel and Tattersall’s were trading at Collarenebri. Elsewhere the Mercadool Hotel was in business at Mercadool, and other hotels included the Mogil Mogil Hotel, the Gooroway Hotel, the British Arms Hotel at Goondoobluie, the Moongulla Hotel and the Barwon Inn near the Dangar Bridge at Walgett.
The Come-by-Chance Hotel lay within the Narrabri Licensing District. Within a month, Edward Maguire had obtained a licence for the Two-Mile Hotel at Warrambool, which was located north of Walgett on the road to Lightning Ridge, and Edmund Young had one for the Comborah Hotel. After the original hotel was destroyed by fire, a new hotel was under construction at Cumborah in 1900. The new Grand Hotel at Carinda, owned by Goldman and Falstein in January 1904, had opened with a number of private rooms. As a multi-storey building in a small settlement, it had a decided impact on the village. The prosperity of Bernhard Goldman and Abraham Falstein did not last long, as they were bankrupted the following year. The newer settlements of the twentieth century also acquired hotels. Applications by Henry Crothers for the Wallangulla Hotel and C. E. Thomas for the Imperial Hotel at Lightning Ridge were made in March 1909. Charles Edward Thomas was granted a licence for the Imperial Hotel from 26 November 1909 onwards.
Hotels opened and closed as their clientele changed, and as the fortunes of publicans varied. The loss of hotels from the early twentieth century onwards was due to a number of factors. The impact of the Licences Reduction Board was a strong factor, but there was also the influence of motorcars taking trade to larger centres nearby. Most severely affected were the hotels to the north and north-west, on the tracks leading out of Walgett across the County of Finch on the opposite bank of the Barwon River. The Grawin Hotel closed on 20 January 1920, followed by the Gooraway Hotel on 20 March 1920 and the Mogil Mogil Hotel on 14 December 1920. The Weetalibah Hotel closed on 30 June 1921, and the British Arms at Gundabloui followed on 30 June 1924.
The remaining hotels survived a little longer, though the Boorooma Hotel closed on 30 June 1926. In January 1927, the Carinda Hotel was destroyed by fire, but a new hotel was built and the hostelry continued to trade. Less successful was the Grand Hotel at Carinda, which closed in November 1932 after a fire destroyed the building in December 1931. The Federal Hotel at Cumborah closed in February 1934, followed in February 1937 by the Commercial Hotel at Old Angledool.
Of the hotels in Walgett, the Barwon Inn near the Dangar Bridge burned down on 5 February 1925. After the licensee, John F Nicholas, traded from temporary premises for some time, the police opposed renewal of the licence. Thus the licence was surrendered in June 1925. The Commercial surrendered its licence and closed on 30 December 1922. The Tattersall’s Hotel closed on 14 June 1927. Hotels in the smaller centres suffered even more severely. The Commercial Hotel at Burren Junction closed on 10 April 1922. The Come-by- Chance Hotel surrendered its licence on 24 December 1924. The Federal Hotel at Pokataroo closed on 23 April 1926. The Rowena Hotel was deprived of its licence in January 1937 for not meeting minimum standards. The Come-By Chance Hotel was destroyed by fire in 1929, but managed to trade from a temporary bar until 1932. A new Imperial Hotel was opened in Walgett in December 1936, one of the landmarks of the town, but it later suffered from inadequate foundations on the black soil and had to be demolished. After the earlier building was lost to fire, a new Tattersall’s Hotel opened in Collarenebri in March 1938.
