It’s a Long Way to the Pub

The country pub is an Australian icon – big verandahs, cold beers, and a meat tray raffle every Friday if you’re lucky. The best are destinations in their own right, serving heritage charm, cosy accommodation, live music and topnotch feeds alongside the obligatory amber ales.

Everyone’s got their favourites but, somehow, we’ve managed to narrow it down to a measly two pubs per state. Pop these on your next road trip and thank us later.

Victoria

Tanswell’s Hotel

Beechworth is a sneaky drinks capital, boasting some of Australia’s best wineries (headlined by the likes of Sorrenberg and Giaconda), the iconic Bridge Road Brewers and, in Tanswell’s Hotel, a proper destination pub. The 1870s-era structure presents as a classic country pub, fronted with wraparound balconies in cream and burgundy, though the real magic is only apparent inside. The menu is largely cooked over fire and skews local, with a particular focus on wild meat (like the venison schnitzel with Russian salad and parsley sauce) paired with local Beechworth beer and wine – there’s takeaway too, with the bottle shop now occupying the hotel’s former strongroom. Best of all, Tanswell’s has become one of regional Victoria’s top live music destinations, attracting touring acts from around the country and overseas.

Tinamba Hotel

Sitting in the shadow of Gippsland’s high country, the tiny town of Tinamba is little more than a jack-of-all-trades general store and a pub – but boy, what a pub. Since taking over the 19th-century watering hole in 2020, Simon and Tania Johnson have turned the Tinamba Hotel into a showcase of the region’s big flavours and small-town hospitality. The front bar is a quiet nook for locals nursing midweek pints, but it’s the restaurant menu that draws the crowds with a showcase of seasonal ingredients from the pub’s kitchen garden alongside locally sourced Gippsland produce.

New South Wales

The Eltham Hotel

Behind its timber country-pub balconies, the Eltham Hotel is not just a piece of history, but a rusted-on part of the community. The Northern Rivers spot – and former brothel – has been serving parched locals since 1903. These days, it’s known for charmingly quirky decor, the rotating line-up of music from local and international touring acts, and a serious upgrade to your standard pub menu courtesy of current head chef Alanna Sapwell-Stone and previous star chefs Ben Raymond and Matt Stone. Upstairs, five rooms are available to book as accommodation: each has its own name – The Rhonda, The Patsy, The Estelle, The Margaret, The Delilah – and features vintage furniture and eye-catching design schemes.

The Milton Hotel

Sitting on the balcony, gazing across toward Green Island, it’s not hard to see why the Milton Hotel is a draw. Honestly, a good regional pub can have little more than a decent backdrop and a cold pint and we’d be set. But for the Milton, that’s just the start. Perched as it is on the New South Wales south coast, the pub’s menu champions fresh-caught local seafood (the sashimi is a warm-weather highlight) alongside fire-roasted steaks. It’s not just the food doing the talking, though, with a selection of just-brewed ales and lagers courtesy of on-site brewery, Dangerous Ales.

Queensland

Nindigully Pub

What drags us to a regional pub? Is it the promise of cold beer? The proverbial pub feed? The atmosphere? The Nindigully Pub is one of those enigmatic destinations well off the beaten track (at the centre of a town with a permanent population of nine) that guarantees the lot. With barely a sprinkle of locals to fill it, the Gully stocks itself with campers and travellers looking for a taste of outback action – and there’s plenty to be had. The pub is a snapshot of vintage Australiana, but that’s just a backdrop to the real draws: yearly pig races, wildly oversized pub food portions (like the 5.5-kilo Road Train burger), free camping and an annual Qld Music Trails stop. A dusty country gem.

Mapleton Public House

Wedged between the sea and the Sunshine Coast hinterland is the Mapleton Public House, a stately remnant of the early 20th century and one of the region’s proper destination pubs. Behind its blush pink facade and sweeping balconies, owners Jessica Huddart and Ben Johnston have turned the Mapleton into a true farm-to-table diner – a natural move considering they run the regenerative Falls Farm just down the road. Executive chef Cameron Matthews hones the produce into a menu that celebrates the area’s seasons – without sacrificing classic pub dishes – making a fine centrepiece for a pub that also hosts some of Australia’s best independent music makers.

South Australia

Prairie Hotel

“Regional” is such a nebulous term – anything outside the capital cities is fair game, and there’s a lot of that. Parachilna, on the cusp of the Flinders Ranges and five hours north of Adelaide, is about as regional as it gets. Here, in the red dirt of outback South Australia, is the Prairie Hotel – a single-storey pub owned since the early ’90s by fair dinkum pastoralists Ross and Jane Fargher. Despite the outback pedigree, the Prairie isn’t just a rustic boozer. Instead, you’ll find a gallery showing off the works of contemporary Indigenous artists, a restaurant with a heavy focus on native ingredients, and Parachilna Brew Project, which bills itself as the most remote brewery in the state. One more thing – make sure you time your visit, as the whole place shuts down from December to February for the brutal outback summer.

Victory Hotel

Pubs are traditionally a beer drinker’s home ground – in the Slim Dusty song, the pub with no beer is “lonesome” and “morbid”, which is probably fair enough. But in the heart of McLaren Vale wine country, we can make an exception. The Victory Hotel in Sellicks Hill is literally surrounded by vineyards owned by publican Doug Govan, is BYO-friendly in the restaurant and has a cellar boasting 20-plus years of McLaren Vale vintages. Head chef Nathan Carr’s seasonal menu is naturally focused on SA produce like Kangaroo Island King George whiting and Myponga Beach squid, making an ideal match for the pub’s extensive wine selection and pristine ocean views.

Western Australia

Settlers Tavern

Since taking over Settlers Tavern in 2003, owners Rob and Karen Gough have dialled things up in all respects, turning the once-grungy surfer pub into a boisterous Margaret River icon. The show stopper is the pub’s massive wine list, which features 600-plus bottles (and 50 by-the-glass pours) from Margaret River wine country and beyond. The food menu is rightly lauded, too, featuring low-and-slow American barbeque thanks to the pub’s massive Yoder Frontiersman smoker, with options including tender beef brisket with mashed potatoes and coleslaw. The rest of the menu highlights local produce, using 100 per cent Australian seafood for the likes of Baja-style fish tacos and chilli mussels in a white wine tomato broth. On top of it all, the Tav is Margaret River’s music hub, with acts as big as Wolfmother and Birds of Tokyo gracing the stage in recent years.

Condingup Tavern

There isn’t a whole lot to the middle-of-nowhere town of Condingup on WA’s south coast, but the Condingup Tavern is well worth the trip. Built in the 1970s from local granite and jarrah, the tavern is part petrol station, general store, cafe, accommodation and pub – an all-in-one for locals and holidaymakers heading for the white sand beaches of Esperance or Cape le Grand. The food is simple – local, line-caught snapper is a signature – and the beer is cold. Add in all the rugged beauty, and what more could you want?

Tasmania

Furneaux Tavern

There aren’t many permanent residents on Flinders Island (less than 1000 at last count) but those who call the Bass Strait island home are blessed with an isolated patch of pristine beaches, rugged mountains and one beautiful pub. You’ll need to catch a plane to get there (or there’s a weekly barge from Bridport if you’re bringing the car) so it’s worth holing up for a while – ideally at the spectacular Furneaux Tavern. The pub’s good qualities start with its views of Franklin Sound (the stretch of water that divides Flinders Island from the smaller Cape Barren Island), but the best is to be found on the menu, which naturally celebrates local seafood, headlined by crayfish and scallops. Furneaux Tavern’s accommodation offering is 12 units set amid an acre of native gardens – ideal since the island isn’t really a daytrip.

The Pub in the Paddock

Pubs don’t come much more idiosyncratic than the Pub in the Paddock, a 19th-century boozer that, true to its name, is plonked in the middle of a paddock in the rural town of Pyengana. Some pubs on this list are bastions of fine food or blessed with world-class views, but the Pub in the Paddock has a more rustic, down-home charm. There’s the market garden that supplies much of its menu, accommodation for those keen to stay among the bush and rolling hills and – we did say idiosyncratic – the pub’s resident beer-drinking pig, Priscilla, who’s more than partial to a watered-down house ale.

This story is part of Broadsheet’s special Aussie Travel Issue, presented by Up, exploring uncommon escapes and remarkable stays close to home.