Royal Hotel Berrigan

And so, after an excellent final night in St Arnaud, it was time for the Royal Tour’s first interstate foray to come to an end. So, much to Anthony’s disappointment, we departed Victoria for home. But luckily enough, our route home took us to two more Royals on the north side of the border. The first of those: the Royal Hotel Berrigan.

Berrigan is the kind of small town that you might see on a map, but aren’t sure if there’s going to actually be a town there or if it’s just the ‘locality’ name for a couple of farm houses and an RFS station. I can confirm that Berrigan is actually a town. And a pretty decent one at that. A bit over a thousand people, but one of those cool country towns that you can feel the character in.

The Royal Hotel Berrigan itself is one of those grand old, straight out of the 60’s pub. But is was still in really good nick. And you certainly got the impression immediately that it was the kind of social-hub-of-the-town pub that would definitely go off on a big night. Unfortunately for us, it turned out that big night was the one before we got there.

We walked in around 10:30 on a Sunday morning and were greeted by a gamely struggling (but definitely struggling) publican. As he poured us a few schooners, he told us that the day before was Berrigan’s annual race day. And the population of Berrigan (publican included) had apparently celebrated at the Royal accordingly.

With schooners in hand, we wandered from the front bar into the depths of the pub quietly wishing we had made it to Berrigan the night before. There were a few signs of a bit of a slow start to the morning. Neither the Buckhunter game nor 20 cent(!) table arcade games were yet up and running. Lights weren’t fully on in the back or the toilets. But none of that took away from the fact that this was still a pretty cool pub.  

A massive back room with a couple of pool tables, some big TV’s, and some good old barrel-based seating. Going a bit further and there was great big beer garden which was no doubt pumping the night before.

We settled down with our schooners for a couple of games of pool. It was pretty easy to picture ourselves settling down for a session here and seeing what the Berrigan locals had in mind in terms of recovery beers. Personally, I could really picture heading down to this place on a regular basis if this was my local. Unfortunately Berrigan is probably just a bit too far for that to be the case.

As we played, we started to see some locals trickle through. It was a pretty even mix of straight up hangover nursing and ambitious backing up. For every bleary eyed couple gingerly easing their suitcases down the stairs, there was an ambitious group there to pick up a case of beer to take fishing.

As I’ve mentioned previously on the blog, the first Royal of the day can sometimes be a little awkward. But some of those first pubs of the day have been some of our favourite Royals on The Tour so far. The publican may not have been super happy to see us walk through the door, but the Royal Hotel Berrigan is a cool pub that seems like it gets pretty lively on a given night.  It’s one I’d definitely come back to. If only we’d been there the night before.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Berrigan, NSW
• Population: 1,260
• Date Visited: Sunday, November 5, 2023
• Visited By: Cory, John, and Anthony
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: Carlton Draught
• Beer Consumed at Pub: VB (Schooner)
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $7.50
• Unique Award: Royal We Showed Up a Day Late To
• Tour Progress: 35.1% (47/134)