Royal Hotel Rosedale

After spending a bit of time and a couple of schooners basking in the glow of hitting our 100^th Royal Hotel in Tiaro, we eventually had to move on with the Tour. There was no time to rest on our laurels. Those remaining 30 or so Royals weren’t going to visit themselves. And the first Royal of the home stretch (and the one to take us over the 75% mark for the Tour) was the Royal Hotel Rosedale.

Tiaro was a small town, but Rosedale is even smaller. It’s the kind of place we’d be unlikely to ever make it to were it not for the Royal. But if the residents of Tiaro were luck to have their Royal as their local, the residents of Rosedale were even luckier. Because the Royal Hotel Rosedale is awesome. It’s a big, old school, single story timber pub.

The inside was full of character. It’s the kind of place where you’re reasonably sure that in the evenings, the stools at the bar would have a specific local assigned to each of them. Further back is a giant room for the bistro and a couple of new looking pool tables. There was no air-conditioning at the Royal Hotel Rosedale, other than a few ceiling fans. But this is the kind of pub where the primary means of cooling down is a cold beer in the hand. It was everything a country pub should be.

We arrived just before the kitchen closed for lunch and were just able to get our orders in. While we waited for the food to come out the aforementioned pool tables got a bit of a workout. John’s car was a bit behind us, so the pool was actually competitive.

Just as we were getting stuck into our second schooners, our lunches arrived. And the food at the Royal Hotel Rosedale was exactly what you’d hope for and expect in a pub like this. Nothing overly fancy. Just really good, tasty pub classics. And the portion sizes were bordering on the absurd. Cam’s chicken burger was essentially 1.5 chickens worth of schnitzel stuffed inside a Cobb loaf. It may have added 20% to his overall mass, but he damn near finished the whole thing.

The beers were flowing (except for the nominated drivers), the pool tables were awesome, and the whole ambiance was great. I’m not entirely sure if it’ll crack the next Top 10 list or not. But it will most certainly be in the conversation. This was definitely the first pub on this particular trip to earn the hallowed ‘could’ve-spent-all-day-there’ status.

But unfortunately we couldn’t. There was one more Royal to visit on the day and then we had to get to Agnes Water for the night. So we finished one last game of pool, and got into the car to head north one last time, heading for Mt Larcom.

Royal Stats

• Town/Suburb: Rosedale, QLD
• Population: 452
• Date Visited: Friday, February 6, 2026
• Visited By: Cory, John, Bert, Turner, Big Al, Cam, Jon, and Bull
• Beer Sponsorship on Sign: Great Northern
• Beer Consumed at Pub: XXXX Bitter
• Price of Schooner of Said Beer: $7.50
• Unique Award: Royal with the Most Comically Oversized Burgers
• Tour Progress: 75.4% (101/134)