The Major’s Creek Hotel is a great spot for a day trip. Photo: Tenele Conway.
When they say to pull up a pew on the verandah of the Majors Creek Hotel, they mean it in the literal sense. Two long church pews line the bullnose verandah of the pub, the sage-green paint peeling from the gnarled but once-holy timber.
In a town of 290 people and few businesses, there’s no better place to be than helping prop up the 112-year-old verandah, and many a local has spent many an hour doing just that.
You can tell the locals from the blow-ins at the Major’s Creek Hotel. Some regulars come prepared with their own personalised Major’s Creek Hotel stubby holders, emblazoned with their nickname, and some just talk the kind of talk that becomes a matter of pride when down at the local.
Corralling the Major’s Creek locals and filling them with beverages has been the responsibility of Jackie and Simon Bennett since 2021, and it’s a job they walked into with absolutely no experience but with confidence that they could make it work.
“I sort of felt confident that we could do it. I knew how hard it would be. I’m not sure my husband did, but he didn’t need to know,” Jackie laughs.
“Majors Creek is a fantastic little community; they were happy that a husband-and-wife team were taking it on.”
Stop by and pull up a pew at the Major’s Creek Hotel. Photo: Supplied.
The corner building in Seymour Street, in which the pub resides, was erected in 1913, and despite being well and truly settled into its profession as the town’s only drinking hole, it isn’t the original pub in town.
The original Elrington Hotel from 1856 was across the road, and its name is still used to refer to the current pub, which somehow now bears two legitimate names.
What happened to the original Elrington seems to be somewhat of a mystery; Jackie shares that there are no remnants of it on the adjacent block, which is still owned by the pub today, and in her chats with a local historian, he is unsure whether it was taken by fire or simply knocked down.
Despite not being a Georgian or Victorian-era pub, the building as it currently stands is steeped in history and feels like the sort of hotel that’s being swept away with modernity. Jackie isn’t shy to share that it’s falling down around them, but that’s part of the attraction.
“When people come out for the first time, they walk through the place and the paint is peeling, and the floors are uneven, and if it’s raining, it’s leaking, but people look at the pictures, and we hear them remark that they love that it’s a genuine old pub. It hasn’t been modernised and gentrified,” Jackie says.
That desire to hold onto the historical nature of the pub is something that Jackie says is expressed by the locals, who are right onto it if anything is moved or changed.
“When we put in a big TV, we moved a shelf of old-fashioned beer bottles and the dartboard, and people still say today, ‘Where’s the dartboard gone?’,” Jackie says.
”They may not have been here for 20 years, but they remember.”
Jackie and Simon are the epitome of pub owner/operators. They greet locals and strangers alike with a warm welcome, friendly chat and that extra care and attention that comes from investing your livelihood into a historic pub.
That care also translates into the menu, where Jackie’s team serves what she calls good, old-fashioned homemade food with the primary goal of making as much from scratch as possible.
“The schnitzels are sliced real chicken breast that we crumb. The salt-and-pepper squid is made from real squid that we buy in and slice up and coat ourselves. We make our meatloaf from scratch, and the garlic prawns are made to order,” shares Jackie, who feels that they are serving up the best food in the region.
The Major’s Creek Hotel has been running since 1913 and is full of historic charm. Photo: Tenele Conway.
With minimal changes planned for the pub, apart from a possible new roof, Jackie and Simon are investing in the community through fundraising and community activities.
The Friday night meat tray raffle raises between $3500 and $4000 a year, which goes towards the community Christmas party and the New Year’s Day picnic that takes place on the recreation reserve.
Jackie says they raised more than $20,000 on Anzac Day, with the proceeds going to several locals who are battling cancer, and in 2024 they raised close to $15,000 for the men’s health charity Movember.
The annual woodchop event that Jackie and Simon put in place last year also won the Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council, Braidwood Event of the Year Award in early 2025, and Jackie feels it’s starting to attract an audience from further afield.
Country pubs may be on the decline around Australia, but Jackie and Simon prove that with a little effort, they can bind a community. I reckon you should pop in and pull up a pew when you’re next in the area.
The Major’s Creek Hotel is at 2 Seymour Street and is open from Tuesday to Sunday from noon until the last of the locals head home.
