The Commercial Hotel (Top Pub) – 18 Quondola Street

Quondola Street, Pambula, showing the Commercial Hotel to the right, C. 1910s. Courtesy of the George Family Collection.

Dubbed the Top Pub (can you guess why?), Pambula’s Commercial Hotel is the epitome of Pambula’s waste not – want not ethos. When owner John Behl (who had no doubt built up quite a thirst after all of his other exploits) was planning his new hotel, he purchased the flood affected old school house from down on the flats and recycled the bricks in the construction of the Commercial, completed in 1878. Still serving the community after almost a century and a half, it remains an outstanding illustration the town’s tradition of reusing and recycling the past for the future.

John Behl and his wife Mary ran the business for a decade until William Johnson took over in 1884 and advertised “To tourists unusual advantage will be offered. Boats, fishing tackle, guns, rifles provided, and a buggy and horses to drive them to any of the beautiful spots in the neighbourhood.”

Many owners, renovations and improvements have graced the Commercial since, including the introduction of the town’s first billiard table in 1889, and in 1926 “a beer pump by which the beer is aerated and passed through an ice chamber!” Imagine that! Although the Commercial is now Pambula’s only hotel, Pambula boasted many others over the years, the number exploding during the 1860s gold rush, when no less than seven were in operation.

In 1889 Alex and Caroline Robertson took over, commencing a relationship between the Robertsons and the Commercial that would span two generations. Check out the northern wall of the pub for local artist Nicki Hall’s mural Mrs. Robertson’s Rule depicting the Commercial in the early 1900s celebrating Caroline Robertson, licensee of the pub from 1895 until 1916. By now you may have worked up a bit of a thirst – like John Behl, which you may quench in the Top Pub as you so desire.

HEAD SOUTH DOWN QUONDOLA STREET