Australian Heritage Hotel 100th Anniversary

Rory Platt
24th Sep 2014

If you find yourself sitting on the corner of Cumberland and Gloucester Street sipping a cider on a sunny day, you’d struggle to truly fathom the historical significance of the ground beneath you.

Trying to even comprehend what the landscape around you would have looked like prior to the white man’s interference is overwhelming, so let’s narrow it down from tens of thousands of years to a more manageable hundred.

In 1914, Sydneysiders saw many of their young men volunteer for the war effort overseas. Bondi Beach was dominated by sand dunes rather than sunbathers, and over at Freshwater the first surfboard to grace the Australian waves had just arrived from Hawaii.

The only way to cross Sydney Harbour was by boat, and the Harbour Bridge was still ten years away from the beginning of construction. Not far from where it would be built, the Australian Heritage Hotel planted it’s roots. There it has remained to this day, and by November it will officially be 100 years old.

Short of receiving a letter from the Queen (which probably won’t actually happen), The Rocks based pub decided a century was worth celebrating. To commemorate this momentous occasion, the Australian Heritage Hotel will be starting the celebrations early, 17th - 20th October, when the Hotel will host the 10th Australian Beer Festival. There will be heritage brews on offer, made specifically for the celebration, along with blind tastings and food stalls.

The party itself will be held at the Australian Heritage Hotel on 14th November from 3pm onwards. Besides plenty of beer flowing and live entertainment, you can bet there’ll be a great birthday cake. If you have any of your own fond memories, photos or artifacts of the place, feel free to share them on the Australian Heritage Hotel’s Facebook page. Any particularly good ones will be displayed in the venue during November (with your permission of course).

If you’re in the market for nostalgia, you could do worse than enjoying a drink in a hotel that’s name survived the plague and two world wars.