Gooraway Hotel

The Gooraway Hotel (or Goorooway) was a hotel and coach stop located about 27 kilometres north of Walgett on the traveling stock route. It was opened on 9 May 1879 by William Simpson on land owned by Dungalear Station. The alcohol license granted to the hotel was issued in part by Justice of the Peace Robert L. Moore of Angledool Station.

In 1882, two dam excavators, Walsh and Moffat passed away at the hotel of heat exhaustion (“heat apoplexy, accelerated by drink”) while working to sink dams during the drought and water shortage.

Licensee Harry Worrad was fined £10 for supplying alcohol to aboriginal customers, Worrad providing a defence that is quite offensive and doesn’t bear repeating in modern times.

In 1911, five couples were married at the Gooraway Hotel by Reverend Armstrong, including three miners: Jim Digby, Watty Vause and Ted Moody. The couples had to tend with rising floodwater en route to the hotel.

A drover’s assistant was killed near the Gooraway Hotel in 1913, having been found with his skull smashed in — it is understood he had been bucked from his horse and hit his head on an overhanging branch.

The Gooraway Hotel closed in 1920, despite the protests of thirty locals.

Licensees: 1879 - William Simpson, 1882 - Charles Ferguson, 1884 - Harry Worrad, 1886 - Joseph Bradbury, 1895 - George Ragan, 1896 - James Holmes, 1900 - Arthur Dawson, 1912 - George Beckett, 1913 - David Aitken, 1914 - William Pritchard, 1918 - Louisa Pritchard.

• Gooraway Hotel @ The Pub Route.

Article: Research by Russell Gawthorpe and Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: ‘Government Gazette Notices’, New South Wales Government Gazette, 17 June 1884, iss. 284 (supplement), p. 3941; ‘Marriage Under Difficulties - Five Brides Taken Through a Flood’, Evening News, 28 February 1911, p. 7; ‘Through Floods to Matrimony’, The Tamworth Daily Observer, 2 March 1911, p. 2; ‘Local and General’, The North Western Courier, 17 December 1917, p. 2; Walgett Spectator, 17 July 1919; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, p. 154.