Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 45
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 45]
22
The "Grosvenor" (demolished later to make Bradfield Highway), the "Wentworth" (facing Lang Square), the "Metropole", and "Adams Tattersalls", were the principal family hotels, though there were some popular less expensive ones such as the "Arcadia", the "Grand Central", the "Royal" (where Dymocks now stands), the "Great Southern" (in upper George St), and "Aaorans [Aarons] Exchange".
Adams Marble Bar was one of the City's show places and was rapidly becoming world famous. It had been built by "mine host" George Adams from the huge profits of his Tattersalls sweepstakes, the only big lottery in Australia. Its front vestibule led into a large bar room. The walls of both were panelled with polished marble of many colours. Oil paintings of beautiful near-nude women adorned the panels in the coffered ceilings. The massive counters of the bars were supported on large carved caryatids, the whole being made of American Cedar. It was famous also for the pulchritude and easy manners of its barmaids.
In addition to the Public Bar, where patrons had to stand while drinking, most pubs had a Saloon Bar for the fastidious gentry who were prepared to pay fourpence a pint for their beer instead of only threepence in the other bar, for the privelege [privilege] of sitting down at small tables to drink and talk, and of not running the risk of being jostled in a crowd. In either bar, whisky and other spirits were sixpence a nip, and the bottle was usually placed on the counter for the drinker to help himself. The bottle departments sold plain black bottles of beer at sixpence each. This was unfiltered beer, with some of the yeast still suspended in it; a much more palatable and healthy beverage than the clarified synthetic lagers that replaced it later, but it frothed too much, and too long, for quick service in the rush hours.
City fire stations had straw-bedded stalls for pairs of horses alongside the fire engines. The harness was suspended above the horses by a seemingly complicated system of pulleys and cords, ready to be dropped down on them by the first fireman to slide down a vertical pole from the residential quarters