The self-proclaimed best pub in the town of Bodalla, (don’t tell the brewery down the road). Photo: Tenele Conway.
The Bodalla Pub, a pretty little red weatherboard drinking hole on the busy Princes Highway, is the best pub in town.
It may seem like a bold claim that the brewery down the road may not agree with, and it raises the question, how do we know that the Bodalla Pub is the best pub in town? Because the sign out the front says so, of course.
No matter what your personal opinion of the pub that was first established in 1877, the important thing is, this is no ordinary pub. But how do I know it’s no ordinary pub? Well pull up a stool, grab a schooner, and let’s have a yarn.
The pub stands on a busy section of the Princes Highway in a pretty little red weatherboard. Photo: Tenele Conway.
It all begins with the town of Bodalla itself; it may look like an ordinary NSW farming town, but it certainly didn’t start life as an ordinary town. Cute yes; quaint, yes; but not ordinary.
Bodalla began life in the mid-19th century with a vision of an industrial farming utopia. A place to work, a place to live and a place to combine the two pursuits in a way that blurs the lines between life and work.
Some may call it a ‘company town’, but that wasn’t the vision of its creator T.S Mort, who took full ownership of 13,000 acres of South Coast land in 1860. Mr Mort, who had already left his stamp on Australia’s wool industry, named his land and the settlement that was to come, Bodalla Estate, a name derived from the Indigenous Yuin word for the area ‘Botally’, which is thought to have meant ‘haven for boats’ or ‘several waters’.
Mr Mort wanted more than a ‘company town’, and he commonly referred to the community he began creating for his more than 200 dairy industry workers as a ‘model rural settlement’.
He commissioned a grand church; he put his time and energy into shaping a civilised and orderly society; and he focused on shaping Australia’s dairy industry with the foresight of being a major supplier of dairy products to Britain and France.
It’s a brave man who imagines supplying cheese to the French, but by all accounts, T.S.Mort was the kind of trailblazer to do just that, and through all his manoeuvring and innovations, he is remembered as the ‘father of Australian dairying’.
Australia’s tightened liquor licensing rules were nearly the end of the pub in Bodalla but a total rebuild in 1910 saved it. Photo: Tenele Conway.
But where does the Bodalla pub fit into this futuristic approach to farming? If T.S. Mort had his way, being a rabid teetotaller, the pub wouldn’t have factored into his plans at all, but his utopian farmers proved otherwise, and when it was discovered that alcohol was readily passed through the hands and mouths of the Bodalla workers, the move was made to build an establishment to make drinking an official pasttime.
That was in 1877, and that original pub, known as the Bodalla Arms Hotel, was built on higher ground than the original Bodalla settlement as flooding proved to be an issue in the town’s original location.
T.S. Mort died only a year after the Bodalla Arms Hotel was established, having not lived long enough to realise his full vision for Bodalla. The All Saints Church that was built shortly after his death and to his design is the most tangible piece of his legacy that is still standing today. The ominous granite church built from stone from Mort’s land almost, but doesn’t quite, overlook the new Bodalla pub that was built in 1910.
That pub, the same one you can and should visit today, stands in the place of Mort’s pub that no longer met Australia’s new liquor licensing laws that were tightened around federation.
Walking through the door and into the eclectic front bar, you get a feel for a community meeting place that’s still important in the region, particularly to the dairy farmers that work the land to this day. At midday on a Friday, the locals are already propping up the high tables surrounding the bar, and the large picture windows in the extended dining room overlook the same hills that Mort looked upon as he planned his farming utopia.
The Bodalla Pub is quirky in all the right ways and like only a country pub can be. Photo: Tenele Conway.
The location is one of a kind; the busy Princes Highway out the front may make crossing the road feel like a game of Frogger where you can only hope to not become the squashed frog, but it sure does make for good people-watching as you shoot the breeze like you can only do in the embrace of a historic Australian pub.
Add in a homemade burger or two from the extensive menu, a chilled glass of your favourite brew and a gaggle of your favourite drinking buddies and it isn’t too hard to see the utopia that Mort was aiming for.
The Bodalla Pub is located at 73-77 Princes Hwy, Bodalla. It’s open 7 days a week.
