Monday, June 4, 2018

Regatta Hotel with the Brisbane City Sketchers

What a wonderful morning, eight of us came out to sketch at the historic Regatta Hotel.  So named because of the boat regattas held there in days gone by.

In 1886, the current and second Regatta Hotel, three-storeyed brick building, was erected for Brisbane publican William Winterford. , this is the building you see today.
The Regatta was one of a number of large, masonry, first-class hotels designed by Richard Gailey in the 1880s.
A famous women's liberation protest took place in the public bar in 1965, when two women, Merle Thornton (mother of Australian actress Sigrid Thornton) and Rosalie Bognor, chained themselves to the public bar footrail in protest at Queensland's restriction of public bars to men only. The protest was not successful despite other similar protests; it was years before the laws changed.

Floods were a huge problem being that the hotel sat on the river bank.. The hotel survived several floods.
It was first flooded in 1887, then again in 1893. Lack of wider custom, the financial depression of the early 1890s, and the floods of 1893, nearly ruined Winterford. 1908 - 1974 - 2011 saw more flooding.  It is said the canoes rowed to the second story to get a beer during the 1974 floods..
$10 million was spent on renovations before an official reopening in September 2012




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