BEACHY’S MANNUM HOTEL

I’VE ALWAYS FIGURED IT’S the ultimate wrap for a publican – having his/or her pub pretty much lose its real name and be referred to as “Finn’s” or “Napper’s” or “Sarah Fraser’s”.

Okay that last one was a brothel – famously patronised by the Duke of Edinburgh - but you get the picture.

In my second last year of high school, I started drinking at a now demolished pub on the corner of George and Essex streets in Sydney. It was a vibrant, boho place filled with luminaries from the stage, from literary circles, political cliques, workers and bosses.

Germaine Greer would flit in and take over the place, Frank Hardy would occupy one corner, swinging from angry and bitter to aggressively entertaining, but forever passionate. Martin Sharp, Donald Horne, Dick Walsh, the creatives