![The Travellers Rest Hotel, Barraganyatti, in the time of William Miles. Picture supplied by MRHS The Travellers Rest Hotel, Barraganyatti, in the time of William Miles. Picture supplied by MRHS](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/168477620/c83bef2a-fc23-4666-94fe-8815ab2a1adc.jpg/r0_0_2188_1298_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Popularly known as the "Beer and go ratty", the Travellers Rest Hotel at Barraganyatti had a short but eventful existence.
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It was said to have been stuck up by bushrangers, threatened with burning down and pulling down, but in the end was destroyed by a natural disaster - a bushfire.
Thomas Rodgers, a carpenter of Kempsey, first applied for a Publican's License for a hotel he was constructing at Barraganyatti, near Clybucca in December 1885.
The premises were to be known by the sign of "The Travellers Rest Hotel" and were strategically positioned near the junction of the road from Kempsey to the Nambucca and the road to the Macleay Heads, the destination near Grassy Head for coastal shipping to the Macleay at that time. It would have eight rooms available for accommodation.
Within a few years, land had been cleared and a racecourse formed near the Hotel and it became a popular sporting venue featuring horse racing, athletics and pigeon shooting.
The licensee at this time, Thomas Tonkin, put the business up for sale in 1892 and it was purchased by Neils Anderson, a former licensee of the Post Office Hotel, Frederickton. When Neils passed away shortly after, his wife Margaret took over the license, the only way a woman could run a licensed premises at that time.
![William and Katherine Miles at their wedding in 1907. Picture supplied by MRHS William and Katherine Miles at their wedding in 1907. Picture supplied by MRHS](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/168477620/deafaa09-9b5b-4fee-9e3e-68fe98a8a35d.jpg/r0_0_1313_1897_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Margaret sold the business in 1897 to Hugh Wallace. By that time, the Macleay River had broken out into the sea at New Entrance, just north of Trial Bay and the resultant decline in traffic to the old entrance at Grassy Head saw a drop in trade which was reflected in a succession of new owners over the next few years.
William John Myers took over the Travellers Rest Hotel in 1913. William was born in Tipperary, Ireland in 1871 and came to Australia aged eighteen. In 1907, he had married Catherine Guiney, whose brother Daniel had worked at the Travellers Rest.
William and Catherine built up the trade at the Hotel again until William died suddenly in Sydney in 1927. The license was transferred to Catherine who held it until 1930. In that year, Harry J Shutes, formerly of the Commercial Hotel, Warialda, would become the last licensee of the Travellers Rest.
Harry immediately set about improving the property, installing up-to-date electric lighting plant and equipment. On the evening of Wednesday 14 January 1930, a fierce bushfire approaching from Stuarts Point caused some concern as Harry and his family turned in for the night.
They awoke at 3 am to find the building full of smoke and as they escaped into the open, saw the building enveloped in flames from end to end. A water pumping plant and fire-fighting apparatus had been planned but was not yet complete and the Hotel was soon burnt to the ground.
Harry began to build a new Hotel on the site and had spent about a thousand pounds by June 1932 when he was given six months to complete the building project or lose his license. Harry finally admitted defeat and surrendered his license.
Today, the foundations of the proposed new Travellers Rest Hotel along the Stuarts Point Road are all that remain.
Photographs of the Travellers Rest and other historic hotels of the Macleay are featured in the Macleay River Historical Society 2024 calendar, available now.
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