Participating Pubs

A Famed City of Old Pubs

Take a shot of Maryborough's fascinating past fill with opium dens, smugglers, new settlers and spirits who still linger. Add in one of the best architectural collections of colonial-erra pubs in Australia and enjoy an intoxicating mix.

Laughter and astonished exclamations have echoed from the walls of Maryborough's pubs for more than 160 years.

Into the shanty bars, pioneer inns and early grand hotels of the second hald of the 1800s came cursing bullockies, staggering sailors, stalking gentry, uncertain immigrants and mines lusting for Gympie Gold.

In the 1990s hotels slaked the first hardy workers in a proud industrial city. They served waves of Australian and American army, navy and air force personnel based in Maryborough in World War II. Through the century the pubs were in turn swept by floodwaters or rocked by night-life.

Pubs With A Past

A walk around Maryborough's CBD reveals many former hotels now operating as shops, restaurants and other businesses. Their days as hotels are long gone, but their history and architectural charm lives on...

Queens
Corner of Kent and Adelaide Streets
After the original hotel was lost in the 1876 fire, this building went up in 1883. It was closed as a hotel in mid 1990s

Francis
Corner of Kent and Richmond Streets.
The hotel is the site of the first hotel built in the new township in 1853. The lower storey was built in 1878 and named the Metropolitan.  A second storey was added after the First World War and was re-named the Francis in the 1930s.

Royal
Corner of Kent and Bazaar Streets.
Completed in 1902, for many years this was the leading hostelry in Maryborough with its grand foyer and staircase. It replaced an earlier two storey wooden hotel first called the Bush Inn built in 1858, and renamed the Royal in 1863.

Engineers Arms
Corner of March and Bowen Streets.
Reminiscent of early pubs in Sydney, this former hotel was built in the 1889 to suit the wedge shaped block replacing an earlier wooden hotel c.1865. It is rumoured to be haunted by members of the tragic Dillane family. Husband Thomas died seven years after taking over the hotel in 1870, followed by his daughter, 11 years, and son aged 17. Wife Anne continued as publican until she too died in the city's worst flood of 1893. Remaining son Michael died the following year.

European
239-245 Adelaide Street.
Built in 1884, it replaced an earlier hotel of the same name which had its own brewery at the rear. It closed in 1950 and was converted into shops.

Great Western / Civic
Ramsay Place, Lennox Street.
Built 1887 across from the railway station the hotel was named to acknowledge the work of opening up the Western Railway Line. Its name was change to the Civic in 1959 and it closed in 1991.