Looking Back history feature: Beef and Beer Barons

The Bulli butcher shop when John Williams operated it. The dwelling to the left was the original home of the Floyd family. The house was demolished to make way for the current butcher shop at the corner of Park Road and the Princes Highway. The old butcher shop (centre) is still in existence.

By MICK ROBERTS ©

John Francis Floyd in his butcher shop at the corner of Park Road and the Prince’s Highway at Bulli.

FOR over a century beef and beer were synonymous with the Floyd family name in Illawarra’s north.

Four generations of Floyds were successful butchers and hoteliers leaving a legacy of a business empire that grew out of the 1860s. The dynasty began with John Floyd in 1867 and ended with great grandson Jim Floyd when he retired as a butcher in 1998.

Butchering was inherited from generation to generation in the family, hitting its…