Celebrate Kiama’s amazing heritage
New Publication
Dr Tony’s 286 page book with over 90 historic images tells the thrilling tale of hotels in Kiama, Jamberoo and Gerringong. From the first hotels in 1837 to the present day, drinking venues have shaped social life and character.
Kiama was once a place of ‘besotted and shameless drunkards’, Bombo hosted an illegal ‘sly grog’ shop and Kiama’s 1899 great fire led to mass bingeing on stolen alcohol.
Click on the book image or below to buy the book for $29.90 + 50c booking fee (local delivery is free). All profits go to Kiama Historical Society
Visit the Pilots Cottage Museum, Blowhole Point
Treat yourself to a fascinating trip down memory lane. Learn how Aboriginal people and white settlers have made their mark on the local area. Find out more about the marks left by cedar gatherers, farmers and miners.
Discover Kiama’s leading history society
See how local people are fighting to defend the area’s heritage buildings and places, and celebrating the history of the area. Why not join up and become part of a growing movement that cares about our neighbourhoods?
Find out more about our local history
Find helpful hints on where to look for more information on the history of the area now known as the Kiama local government area. This includes on the Internet, and names of helpful organisations.
Events
Our popular monthly speaker events are held at the Kiama Library auditorium and attract a good crowd. After the presentation is a chance for questions, then afternoon tea
Meet and Greet for Members and Volunteers
We once again plan to start the year with an informal get-together of members and volunteers at The Sebel Hotel at Yves Bar at 4.00 to 5.30pm. This is a casual get-together to begin our year. We will be meeting in the Oyster Bar at the back of the hotel (no Oyster has ever been seen in this area!). You will be able to order a drink or coffee and sit around to chat. This will begin our hotel year with the launch of Tony Gilmour’s new book in March
Click on book image to buy a copy
Event 1: the (fairly respectable) social history of Kiama hotels
Published by Kiama Historical Society, Tony’s new book tells the thrilling tale of hotels in Kiama, Jamberoo and Gerringong. The book will be available to purchase in March 2025 for $29.90 - all profits to the Historical Society.
The book will be officially launched by the Honorable Gareth Ward, MP for Kiama.
From the first local hotels licenced Kiama and Jamberoo in 1837 to the present day, drinking venues have shaped local social life and character. Where were the hotels, and why did we lose 20 of them? Was it commercial failure, council stubbornness or unreasonable community expectations?
Tony will give insights on the puritanical attitudes of some locals - wowsers - who were horrified that women had to enter a Gerringong pub to post a letter. Despite these attitudes, Kiama’s temperance movement was a failure - several leading supporters were partial to a drink.
Although seen as a male dominated business, women played a vital role running local hotels. Not content to be confined to ‘Ladies lounges’, the Daily Telegraph was shocked in 1943 to find Kiama women sitting alongside men at the bar. Later in the century no-nonsense landladies kept the men in control with a whip of a tea towel or the threat of telling their mothers about bad behaviour.
Saturday 22 March 2024 at 2.00pm: Kiama Library Auditorium. $3 Members of Kiama Historical Society / $5 Non-Members. Includes a refined afternoon tea and cakes
Event 2: rascally tales of local hotels
Join Tony for a beer or wine as he tells stories of wild and wacky antics in our towns’ drinking haunts. Kiama was once a place of ‘besotted and shameless drunkards’, Bombo hosted an illegal ‘sly grog’ shop and Kiama’s 1899 great fire led to mass bingeing on stolen alcohol.
There are many examples of ‘men behaving badly’. However, in Kiama’s 1889 ‘sensational divorce case’ it was a publican’s wife charged with double adultery. To make matters worse, one of the men involved was the town’s leading brewer.
Hear stories of the exotic zoo at the Brighton Hotel boasting a world-record (stuffed) fish, and George Tory’s ways to deal with the Salvation Army and pedantic police officers. Normally respectable Gerringong was horrified in 1874 when a new hotel fuelled ‘drunkenness and rowdyism of the most disgraceful kind’. Jamberoo was even less restrained, with too many drinking haunts. One hotel had a reputation for horses in the bar, customers arriving on lawn mowers and meetings of the Pissed Poets Society.
Will Kiama’s beer strike of 1920 ever be repeated? Hopefully not during this second event!
Saturday 22 March 2024 at 5.00pm: upstairs bar at the Kiama Inn (Tory’s Hotel). Free event with guests invited to buy a drink or two to celebrate the book’s theme - purely for research purposes of course
This book project is supported by Create NSW's Cultural Grants Program, a devolved funding program administered by the Royal Australian Historical Society on behalf of the NSW Government
Russell Fredricks: plane crashes on Saddleback Mountain
Russell Fredericks will be our Guest Speaker and will tell members about three aeroplane crashes in the Kiama LGA. One was at the start of WWII, one towards the end of the war and the other in the late 1950’s. The first two were RAAF planes and the third a RAN flight.
There are not reams of information available, but Russell will give some “basic” descriptions of what is known about each crash, and make mention of the various officers killed. He will include the locals’ reactions and some information about “finding” the crash sites.
This presentation will be a “world premiere” as it will be Russell’s first-ever Power Point show.
Saturday 5 April 2024 at 2.00pm: Kiama Library Auditorium. $3 Members of Kiama Historical Society / $5 Non-Members. Includes afternoon tea
Previous events - time to Podcast!
Our friends at Kiama Community Radio (KCR) have many of our recent events recorded as podcasts. Click on the images below to go to the Podcast.
