Fire destroys small town pub in NSW
The Royal Hotel at Gurley in north-west New South Wales had burnt to the ground.
The century-old pub has been a popular watering hole for over a century for the families of this small town, which currently numbers around 250 people.
The pub was due to close over summer and reopen in March, however the fire was so savage nothing could be saved.
"By the time we got there, [the hotel] was absolutely fully engulfed in flames," Gurley Fire Brigade member Brendan Munn said.
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"[The pub] is not going to recover from this one."
According to Munn the fire burned for hours.
"All we could do was try to slow it and stop it from getting to the house next door, which we did," he said.
"We poured a phenomenal amount of water into the building trying to put out as much as we could but it was just so hot … it was unbelievable."
The owners of the pub which attracts tourists and visitors from far and wide are said to be devastated.
The cause of the fire is yet to be determined.
"We can get specialist resources in there to conduct those investigations, analysis and make sure the site is rendered safe before it is handed back to the owners," Oxley Police District officer Tom Aylett said.
The Acting Superintendent said police would investigate methodically and thoroughly.
The community has also been left devastated and in shock.
"There's been five generations of my family have a cold beer there over the last 100 years, so it goes back a way," former Moree Plains Shire councillor and Gurley resident, John Tramby, told the ABC.
"It was a unique hotel because the upstairs verandah part was a dance floor and a licensed area, which then meant the footpath underneath was licensed, so it was one of the few hotels where you could sit outside on the footpath or side verandah and consume your drinks quite legally," he reflected.
"Like all country hotels it was the centre of the world, and different people for different reasons dropped in."
Jonathan Jackson, 16th December 2024
