Publican Stories

  • The Woman the Law Wouldn’t Let Run a Pub

    Esther McGrath and Port Adelaide’s British Hotel For twenty years, sisters Esther and Elizabeth McGrath ran one of Port Adelaide’s best-known hotels. They served its customers, lived within its walls and kept the British Hotel trading through the Depression and enormous changes along the Port Adelaide waterfront. But for the first several years after their…

  • James Rixon

    Publican – Eden & Bega James Rixon, my 4th great-grandfather, was my first known family publican when I began delving into family research. Other family members told me that he ran the Crown & Anchor in Eden, which remains one of the area’s oldest surviving buildings. From there I became curious about the man behind…