Not A Gold Rush, But Still

NOT A GOLD RUSH. BUT STILL !!
A Rush On Richmond Beer

Continuous Streams Of People Now Flow Daily Into
The Grand Hotel, Kalgoorlie, and the Shamrock Hotel, Boulder.

RICHMOND beer has captured the Goldfields, as it has done every other part of Australia. The popular beverage is now so greatly in demand that the hotels which are now featuring it— the Grand in Kalgoorlie and the Shamrock in Boulder City- are daily attracting streams of people, many of whom walk some distance for a pot of the pleasing and refreshing fluid. In Hannan Street, Kalgoorlie, it is now a common sight to see large throngs of men congregated outside the Grand Hotel. Even in “off'” hours, the bars are well filled, while on a Saturday afternoon, it is a case of about

Six Deep at the Counter

and large number of people lined up in the street outside. In fairness, however, to Mr A. E. Kurring, the proprietor, it must be said that the popularity of the Grand Hotel is in itself largely responsible for this patronage. Since he came to the fields about 18 months ago, Mr Kurring has more than maintained the prestige of this well-known hostelry, which was the first big hotel erected in Kalgoorlie.

The Grand Hotel, Hannan St, Kalgoorlie – Image SLWA

A gentleman and a charming personality and in every sense of the phrase ‘a good sport’, Mr Kurring has already made a host of friends. Prospectors and miners from the backcountry who have for many years been coming to the Grand Hotel come there still, but with added pleasure. They like the hotel all the more for the improvements made in it by Mr Kurring, they like the new host personally, and they like the new beer. This is the answer to the question often asked by visitors passing by this part of Hannan Street — ‘What is the crowd doing there?

The Shamrock Hotel Boulder – Image SLWA

At Boulder City, the attraction of the Shamrock Hotel may also be attributed to the personal popularity of the host, Mr George Robert Mewburn, who has been in the hotel business since the Celebration boom about 15 years ago. Like Mr Kurring, he is a Victorian, though he came to this State in the nineties, and no man has assimilated the spirit of the West more thoroughly or has been more in harmony with life on ‘the Fields’. Commencing at the old Crown Hotel in Hannan Street, Mr Mewburn afterwards took over the management of the Celebration Hotel. He has also had several hotels throughout the Wheat Belt, and wherever he has staked his claim, he has made a reputation as a straight shooter, a sportsman and a good fellow. As long ago as 35 years, he raced horses on the Goldfields. Recently, when the above-mentioned gentlemen introduced Richmond beer to ‘Goldopolis’, they did not seem to have as much chance as hotelkeepers in other parts because the local brewing industry is exceptionally well patronised and its product has a stronghold.
But as results have shown, Richmond beer has ‘caught on’ as well here as anywhere. Richmond beer is a product of the enterprise of Mr P. G. Hay of the firm of Coulson Hay and Co, hop merchants of Tasmania. Perhaps he did not realise when he started to brew a beer of 100 per cent purity, and dared the vested interests of Victoria to stop him from marketing it, what he was up against. He soon found himself taking a leading part in a beer drama that the public watched with the keenest interest. He seemed like a puny figure storming an impregnable fortress, but with daring worthy of Douglas Fairbanks, he broke down the battlements of monopoly and conquered.

Poster – Image SLWA

Mr Hay proved himself a born organiser. He realised that if he was to win, he must give the public a beverage of unquestionably high quality. So he first of all acquired from Dr Leopold Nathan, the famous continental brewer, the right to use in Victoria the Dr Nathan brewing system, which he had made so successful. In 1927, he erected the brewery at Richmond, Melbourne, which most people regarded as a joke, but which made the public of Australia gasp with astonishment. Encountering numerous difficulties which would have daunted most men, Mr Hay eventually got his brewery into working order. At the beginning of the enterprise, the output of the brewery was only 88 dozen bottles per week.

‘There’s a new beer on the market” people began to say. “Have you tried it?”

And the question was asked more and more as the hotels’ stock of beer began to run out of supplies. The New South Wales capital, usually slow to accept anything that succeeds in Victoria, soon went ‘Richmond Time’ after time, both in Melbourne and Sydney, the demands for Richmond have attracted crowds, which caused a dislocation of the traffic.

Yet it must not be supposed that hotels only doing a bar trade went over to Richmond. Such high-class residential hotels as the Sydney, the Arcadia, Tattersall’s and the Pacific at Manly stocked it. Then Brisbane hotels followed in the grand parade of Richmond’s popularity. In fact, the invasion of Queensland was somewhat sensational, and now there are a large number of hotels banded together under the name of ‘Richmond Free Hotels Association.’ And so the success of Richmond spread from State to State and from town to town in the East till Friday, March 13 last, when the bulk beer was introduced to Western Australia in defiance of superstition. The first bars to stock it were the de Pedro’s Alhambra Bars, the Union, the Wentworth and Windsor hotels in Perth, and the Fremantle and Orient hotels in Fremantle.

Others have since followed, and the beer is now on tap in every part of the State. When Richmond hit Kalgoorlie recently, similar scenes were enacted as in other centres and in the first days, many people had to be refused a pot owing to the congestion in the bars of Arthur Kurring’s Grand Hotel. We are told that extensive plans are being made to meet the demand in the coming summer, and they will be needed if the Richmond thirst is to be satisfied on the Goldfields. It would be absurd to attribute the success of Richmond to anything but merit, for the average beer drinker is, what the Americans call, ‘a wise guy.’ But what is it that makes Richmond beer so good to the taste and so agreeable in its effect? Simply that malt, hops, yeast and sugar, all of the best quality, and all highly nutritious, are the sole ingredients of the beer. You drink it, you smack your lips with pleasure, you are pleasantly but not inebriately stimulated, and you feel no ill effects afterwards.