Royal Hotel Coolamon

And so, with Corowa and the first Victorian leg of the Tour in the review mirror, we headed into the wilds of central New South Wales for the next leg. A leg that started with the Royal Hotel Coolamon.

But before I get too deeply into the pub itself, I should introduce the cast for this particular segment of the tour. There was the stock standard duo of John and myself. But for this leg we were joined by Royal first-timers Jase and Bert. Super long-time readers of the blog may remember Bert from such posts as Reub Goldberg Brewing Machine and Five Barrel Brewing. Back when the blog was largely about beer and breweries rather than a compulsive and completely arbitrary need to visit pubs across the country based on their names. But I digress.

The four of us set off on a bright Friday morning for the first 4-hour stretch out to Temora. Along the way, we stopped in to the small town of Galong. I knew Galong definitely had a Royal. But from what research I was able to muster, I was pretty sure that it was closed. And it was.

So we continued on towards our first anticipated Royal of the leg, Temora. My research on this one (i.e. Google) indicated that it would be open at 10am for our first stop and beer of the day. However, when we reached Temora, the place was in an odd state of not-quite-openness. The roller shutters were up, the lights were on, but the doors were locked and the only people we could see inside were made of cardboard and spruiking pre-mixed beverages.

We asked a couple of locals if it was open and received a frustratingly cryptic reply of ‘oh it’s always open, you just sometimes can’t get it’. Follow up questions yielded equally confusing responses. I half expected one to them to go on to inform us that one of them only spoke the truth and one only told lies. But we fairly quickly gave up on getting straight answers out of the two Lewis Carroll-esque Temorans. We stayed in Temora just long enough to pass a pony on the sidewalk and have a quick toilet break. Then we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to just have to bite the bullet and move on and try to come back Temora on a subsequent trip.

So we piled back into the car and headed for the next scheduled stop, Grong Grong. But isn’t this post titled ‘Royal Hotel Coolamon’? you might ask. Well I’m getting there.

On the way to Grong Grong we passed through the town of Coolamon. Still stinging from our somewhat lacklustre start to this leg of the Tour. But as we passed through the town, we got a first for the Tour: a surprise Royal! None of my research had turned up a Royal in Coolamon. But as we passed I spotted it, John chucked a U-turn, and there we were, our first Royal for the trip. And our first surprise Royal of the entire Tour.

And now, in paragraph 8 of this post, I’ll tell you a bit about the topic of the post: the Royal Hotel Coolamon. It’s a pretty standard but classic looking Royal from the outside. It was all brick and well looked after. Walking in, it became apparent that it had recently undergone a bit of a spruce up as well. There was still a ton of character there. Nothing too fancy. But it was a nice place for a beer.

The main bar area was very good sized. At lunch time on a Friday it had the requisite scattering of locals at the bar as well. It’s the kind of space you could easily imagine packed with locals on a Saturday night after the local footy. Speaking of which, a very cool touch was the weekly lineups for the local team posted on a large chalkboard on the wall.

There was a good sized beer garden out the back. And the bistro looked pretty good too. And admittedly we probably should have tried it for ourselves. That is instead of waiting til the next pub and settling for 3 bags of potato chips. Overall it was a good solid Royal to (finally) kick off this leg of the trip.

Coolamon itself is a cool looking little town as well. Some really nice looking cafes and shops and providores and that sort of thing. It’s a place that if I find myself passing again (having to make a return trip to Temora for example), I would definitely make a point to stop in and have a beer.

But at that moment, we had to move on. Grong Grong and 3 bags of potato chips awaited us an hour down the road.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Coolamon, NSW
• Population: 2,275
• Date Visited: Friday, February 9, 2024
• Visited By: Cory, John, Jase, and Bert
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: Carlton Draught (and Resch’s)
• Beer Consumed at Pub: VB
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $7.00
• Unique Award: First Surprise Royal
• Tour Progress: 36.6% (49/134)