Looking Back history feature: The Bullocky and politics in the pub

By MICK ROBERTS ©

A bullocky and his team passing the Clifton Inn early last century

BREAKING the established rule of never discussing politics and religion at the bar can have dire consequences.  Some people learn the hard way, like Bulli bullocky James Robinson.

Robinson was a new arrival to the parochial little coal-mining village of Bulli and was causing quite a stir with his outspoken political views. While driving his bullocks through Old Bulli Village to his home on the mountain pass one autumn day in 1872 he was invited to join a couple of blokes for a drink at the Railway Hotel.

Better known to locals at the time as the Miners’ Arms, the Railway Hotel, along with Old Bulli’s three other pubs, have long disappeared. The pub closed in 1913 and was demolished in the 1940s. It sat on the eastern side of the Prince’s Highway, opposite…